"salsa" news and stories

Ketchup may still be king of the condiments, but these days, hot sauce is what's really hot. According to a report by market-research firm Mintel International, sales of ethnic condiments in the U.S. had been chugging along since 2005, but beginning in 2008, when the recession hit and folks started eating at home more, they've been hot as a habanero, increasing 4.8 percent in 2009, with $1.3 billion in sales. Mexican condiments are leading the way in this salsa-powered surge.

That's no surprise to Gloria Cabada-Leman, owner with her husband of the Carolina Sauce Company, in Durham, N.C. Started in 2003, Carolina Sauce is an Internet food retailer specializing in condiments and sauces. She said hot and spicy is a predominant theme these days even in places like New England and the Midwest -- normally bastions of hot-pepper wimipiness.

The most recent trend, Cabada-Leman said, is adding jalapeños (the gateway pepper, she called them) or even habaneros to items that normally don't have them – like ketchup. "In just the past 12 months or so, it has had the greatest increase in sales," she said. "Customers trying it and then coming back as repeat customers."

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Ancient custom of Finland, or just a great combo from a Scandinavian guy who loves his tropical fruit with his red meat? Finnish photographer Ansik captured this burger with a healthy slab of pineapple wedged among the lettuce and cheese. Lanai, Hawaii, and Turku, Finland, suddenly have a lot in common.

If you, like Ansik, can't get enough of pineapple with your protein, check out a more complex set of flavors in this recipe for chicken burgers with grilled pineapple salsa. The fruit is combined with both sweet and jalapeño (or serrano) peppers, onion, cilantro and garlic, for a sweet-savory-spicy topping.

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Next time the waitress offers you chips and dip at your local Mexican joint, it may be wise to take a pass -- and not just for your waistline.

The Centers for Disease Control released a report that found that contaminated salsa or guacamole were responsible for nearly 1 in every 25 outbreaks of food-borne illness in restaurants from 1998 to 2008, MSNBC.com reported.

The rate nearly doubled over the previous decades, officials said.

"Fresh salsa and guacamole, especially those served in retail food establishments, may be important vehicles of food-borne infection," Magdalena Kendall, a researcher at Tennessee's Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education told MSNBC.com.

Individual ingredients in the tasty dips have also been linked to salmonella outbreaks including peppers, tomatoes and cilantro.

When you start exploring the world of Mexican salsas, you'll find they go way beyond the same old tomato-and-chiles mixture. The tomatillo, which is not a tomato but a relative of the Cape gooseberry and American ground cherry, is tiny, bright green and delicately husked, and makes a tart refreshing salsa verde. Blogger joshbousel, of the meatwave blog, shot the photo above, of the salsa he assembled from a recipe adapted from chef Rick Bayless. The tomatillos are husked and grilled first, for a more complex flavor, then combined with chile serrano, garlic, white onion, cilantro, and some sugar, which offsets the tartness.

If you love tomatillos, take them from salsa to guacamole with this recipe from chef Marcus Samuelsson, who serves his guac with beer-battered fish.

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