How to Make Pico De Gallo | Pico De Gallo Recipes
Chef Jere will show you step by step how to make Pico De Gallo in the video below.
Pico De Gallo is sometimes also called salsa fresca. This Mexican cuisine is a fresh, uncooked condiment made from various fresh ingredients and typically containing chopped tomatoes, onion, peppers, cilantro and lime juice. There are many variations and may also include chilis, cucumbers, radishes or even mangos.
Pico De Gallo is versatile. It can be served as a condiment similar to a salsa or used as the main ingredient for tacos or fajitas.
The Pico can also be served with an entree such as Grilled Chicken Breast with Alfredo Sauce. The Pico De Gallo adds color, texture and variety of flavor. Asparagus spears are a nice touch too!
Pico De Gallo Ingredients
- 4 Roma tomatoes
- 1 small onion (red, white or yellow)
- 1 green bell pepper (red peppers can also be added as shown above)
- 2 Tbsp. chopped cilantro
- 2 Tbsp. lime juice
- 1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
The Alfredo Sauce quick mix is available for purchase at www.RadaKitchenStore.com. You can view additional quick mix recipes at www.radaquickmixrecipes.com.
How to Make Pico De Gallo Video Transcript:
We are going to make Pico De Gallo. Pico De Gallo is Roma tomatoes, green bell peppers, red onion, a little cilantro, and then some acid added to it. Let’s start with the Roma tomatoes. We are going to use a cook’s knife to do this. We are going to cut off each end the Roma tomatoes.
Then we are going dice the tomato—about a 3/8 inch dice on this; not too big but not too small. I like using Roma tomatoes for Pico’s, salsas, fresh salsas; they just have a little bit more flavor than store bought tomatoes. In the summer time if you have home grown tomatoes, always go that route when you make anything like this it just takes it up another notch.
This is pretty nice summer dish because while you are doing this prep you have your chicken breast out on the grill getting done. You have time to come in a do your prep for this, this can also be done even a day ahead of time. All you have to do is your breast and your asparagus; make your sauce in about thirty minutes.
I like using a cook’s knife; it is a little less intimidating than a chef’s knife. Of course, myself I prefer chef’s knife, it is just being a chef that is what I like to use, but it is intimidating. We will show you the chef’s knife a little bit later. I’m using that flexible Rada cutting board to toss it right into the bowl.
The next thing I am going to do is green bell pepper, cut that down. The thing about bell peppers, the ribs are bitter. You really want to take out their ribs. You are going to core your pepper. Just get in there and pull out that rib; see it is just not something you want to put in there, it doesn’t look good. Again, it is just bitter. Just going to slice that right off, you don’t have to get all, just most of it.
Again, we are going to do the same size dice, about a three eights inch dice on the bell pepper. The onion, I am going to use a small red onion, this is a little large I am going to use half of this. When you are dicing onions a good way to do it is you have half an onion here, whatever size dice you want just start at the end and go just through to about the end.
Oo there it is, go right through the onion. Deep to the back edge, the same size of dice that you want the rest of them. So you’re not slicing through the onion completely which will give you your dice started. Then when it is a little safer and in the end it won’t slide off on you and you won’t risk cutting yourself. Then all you do is go straight down and you have your dice right there. Then simply turn it over on its side and dice the rest. Break that apart. Let’s add that to the rest of the ingredients.
Then our last dice will be our cilantro. You need about two table spoons of fresh cilantro; you want mainly just the leaves you do not want the stems, stems are not worth flavors the flavors are in the leaf. We are going to use a chef’s knife; anything about chef’s knife is you can get in and go very fast. The trick is to always keep the tip down. It takes a little getting used to but you always keep the tip down. Keep your fingers in and you start slicing across. You don’t want this fine diced, you want it pretty course. That about all you want to do there. So let’s add the cilantro.
Going to add our lime juice, fresh squeezed or you can use a bottle. A bottle of store bought lime juice, I like using fresh squeezed, a little red wine vinegar. The acids give it that nice punch to it. If you like the spicy, add a couple of jalapenos to it, a couple small peppers. If you like a little bit of heat to it, this is a mild version here. We just want to toss this, going to coat it.
It is good to make this a couple hours in advance, let the lime juice and the vinegar work into the tomatoes and peppers, just mix the flavors together a lot better. There’s the Pico de Gallo for grilled chicken breast, Pico de Gallo Alfredo sauce.
