"salsa verde" news and stories

Tomatillos and hot peppers. Photo: Brent Ridge, Beekman 1802.

Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell are the farmers and innovators behind Beekman 1802, a 200-year-old estate and farm in upstate New York. We'll be running recipes, photos and tales from the farm as their crops come into season.

Earlier this summer, when a friend gave us a few small tomatillo plants, we weren't really that interested in them. Nevertheless, we found a spot in the heirloom garden and pushed them into the dirt.

Three short months later, as we watched every blight-bitten tomato turn brown and drop from the vine, we were thrilled to have those tomatillo plants.

Oddities in the garden, we've been asked more than once what they were. One visitor even exclaimed, "I didn't know you could eat Japanese Lanterns!"

Tomatillos. Photo: The Skinny Chef

I didn't know what to do with tomatillos until I moved to New York City and learned about traditional, homemade Mexican food from many of the cooks I met working in restaurants. They came from towns like Puebla and Oaxaca and they all knew the secret to grinding nuts and spices for the perfect mole and how to roast chilies and other ingredients for sensational salsas -- things I had never tasted in the Mexican restaurants I had visited in the past.

I remember the first time I bought tomatillos, peeling back the husk to reveal a green orb covered with a slight tacky film that made my fingers stick together. Unfortunately, I bit right into the fruit that looks like an unripe tomato! I was disappointed with the taste -- like a cross between celery and cucumber with a sour tang of uncooked rhubarb.

See how Jennifer mastered the tomatillo and get her Salsa Verde recipe after the jump.

Tomatillos, despite their name, are not actually tomatoes, though they are members of the tomato family. They are members of the nightshade family and grow all over the western hemisphere, thriving in the southern United States and Mexico. The plant was originally domesticated by the Aztecs, well over 2,000 years ago, and was brought back to Europe by explorers and settlers, where it continues to flourish in Mediterranean climates.

Tomatillos are typically one to two inches in diameter and are green in color. They have a thin, papery shell on them, called the husk, that the fruit actually grows into as it matures. By the time the fruit is ripe, it may have split the husk open, though it is sometimes held in place by a slightly sticky coating. Peel back the husk before using a tomatillo and wash the fruit gently in soap and water to remove any unwanted residue. When selecting a tomatillo in the market, look for one that has a husk in good condition, rather than one that is shriveled. A fruit that is small, but heavy for its size is likely to be sweeter than a larger one.