Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa
Fresh salsa made with the freshest of ingredients — tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeno, green onions, and a secret ingredient makes this homemade salsa taste like it’s from an authentic Mexican restaurant!
Everyone needs a solid salsa recipe. A tried and true homemade salsa recipe that will be the ultimate crowd pleaser.
My husband could eat chips and salsa for every single meal. He used to go to restaurants and bring home salsa in large styrofoam containers. It was super pricey! I decided that 8 bucks for a pint of salsa was ridiculous and wanted to create my own Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa.
He hasn’t gone back since.
This recipe costs less than $2-3 to make, depending on the price of produce where you live. Did you know a jalapeno usually costs about 4 cents each? That is crazy! Plus it’s made with all of the fresh ingredients and you know exactly where they came from!
The key to this salsa is the combination of fresh ingredients such as vibrant roma tomatoes, fresh cilantro, green onions, jalapenos, and a secret ingredient. I found that white or yellow onions can overpower the salsa and heaven forbid you to get so lucky to pick a strong one that makes you shed major tears.
We tried this salsa with green onions and loved the subtle flavor it gave the salsa without being too overpowering. There were no tears in the house using green onions!
Now there’s a secret ingredient in this Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa that sets it apart. My sister-in-law (hi Sarah!) told me this secret and it is a huge difference-maker in this salsa.
It’s in a little yellow can and it’s called El Pato Salsa de Chile Fresco. It’s only about 59 cents and gives such a rich depth of flavor to this fresh salsa. It can be found in the Mexican food aisle of all major grocery stores.
Since my husband requests this salsa so often, I finally showed him how to make it. Now he is officially obsessed. He runs to the store 1-2 times per week to whip up batches for the week. As soon as he walks in the door from work, he pulls out his chips and salsa and eats his appetizer before dinner.
This recipe is super simple and can be whipped up in a food processor in less than 5 minutes.

- 10 Roma Tomatoes
- 1 cup Fresh Cilantro Leaves (about 1 bunch of cilantro, tightly packed, about 3/4 bunch of cilantro leaves)
- 1 Jalapeno deseeded*
- 1 teaspoon Garlic Salt or to taste
- 4 Green Onions sliced
- (1) 7.75 ounce can El Pato Salsa de Chile Fresco
- Combine the tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeno, and garlic salt in a blender or food processor.
- Stir in sliced green onions and el pato sauce.
- Taste and season accordingly.
- Refrigerate the salsa for at least an hour to give time for flavors to develop.
- *May use 1/2 jalapeno if you want a mild salsa. Most of the heat is located in the seeds and inner membrane. Remove those for a mild flavor. If you like heat, add the entire jalapeno!
I hope you love this Homemade Restaurant Style Salsa as much as we do! Thanks for all of the love and support. Have a great day, my friends!
I just made this for a Mexican-themed weekly family dinner. I’m not a cilantro fan and was skeptical at the amount of cilantro. You win. It is perfect & SO delicious. I was also skeptical at a 10 minute prep time. But it was that quick & easy. I know I’ll be making this frequently. Thanks!
I was just wondering if you can freeze this salsa ok. I wanted to make a large batch.
Thank you
I have early girl and big boy tomatoes could I use those instead of the Roma?
Delish. I was planning to make half batch— so I only used 5 Roma tomatoes, but ended up using about the same of all the rest of the ingredients (including the whole can of the el pato sauce!) and I used fresh garlic and regular salt rather than garlic salt and my oh my this was DELISH!
I blended it all together with my immersion blender then added in the chopped green onions. it left me with the perfect consistency for my kinda salsa. Thank you!
Hello, can this recipe be canned?
Anyone can in hot water bath?