Best Fresh Tomato Salsa Recipe

This easy homemade fresh tomato salsa is made with fresh tomatoes, herbs and garlic and makes an amazing easy appetizer served with tortilla chips. This salsa recipe tastes just like restaurant-style salsa and comes together with the help of a food processor in about 10 minutes.

My family can’t get enough of taco nights, and this fresh tomato salsa has become our go-to recipe—we make it almost every week! The best part? You can prepare it ahead of time and it stays fresh for days. It’s vibrant, chunky, bursting with flavor, and hands-down the best homemade salsa you’ll ever whip up.

This restaurant-style salsa comes together in just 10 minutes with fresh, simple ingredients like juicy tomatoes, fragrant cilantro, crisp red onion, spicy green chilies, a touch of honey, garlic, salt, and pepper. Blend it to your perfect consistency—slightly chunky or silky smooth—and enjoy it as a vibrant dip or as a flavorful topping for fish, chicken, eggs, or tacos.

It resembles the famous Chipotle fresh tomato salsa but made at home.

You may also love this easy mango salsa recipe as a fun twist!

Why you’ll love this salsa recipe

• It’s very easy to make in less than 10 minutes
• This recipe only uses fresh tomatoes and no canned tomatoes
• Literally the best salsa flavors ever!
• You can customize it and make it chunky or smooth
• It is already vegan and gluten free!
• Perfect meal prep recipe!

Ingredients needed for homemade salsa

• Fresh tomatoes – I used a combination of cherry vine tomatoes and Roma tomatoes but any fresh tomatoes with work in this salsa recipe.
• Garlic – fresh minced garlic works best but garlic paste will also work fine as a short cut.
• Green chiles – canned green chiles give this salsa the perfect hint of spice. You could also use chopped jalapeños.
• Purple onion – the onion brings a nice zippy taste and color to this recipe. You can use white, yellow or purple onion.
• Honey – the honey gives a hint of sweetness and rounds out all the savory flavors nicely.
• Cilantro – fresh cilantro is used to give this recipe a wonderful fresh herby taste.
• Salt and pepper – is used to enhance the other flavors.

How To Make fresh tomato salsa

1. Prep the tomatoes. If you are using tomatoes that have seeds then you will want to remove them. If you are using cherry tomatoes then you do not need to remove the seeds. To clean tomatoes all you need to do is slice each one in half, lengthwise, trim off the end and scrape the seeds out with a spoon. Then simply slice them.
2. Blend the salsa. Add the chopped tomatoes, red onion, green chilies, cilantro, garlic, honey, salt and pepper to the bowl of a food processor or high speed blender and blend on high until desired consistency is achieved. I like my salsa chunky so I blended it for about 15 seconds.
3. Serve. Pour the salsa into a bowl and serve it with your favorite tortilla chips.

How super easy is that? Plus the kids will love it since they get to dip chips into it and you feel great because they are eating veggies, ha ha. My kids prefer this salsa over store-bought and sometimes I even use it as a sauce on their pizza!

Oh, and it tastes just like restaurant- style salsa, which is a huge added bonus!

What if I Don’t own a food processor?

No food processor, no problem. This fresh tomato salsa recipe can also be made in the blender. Just add the ingredients to a blender and blend on high until the ingredients are fully combined into a nice chunky or smooth salsa.

How long will this tomato salsa last?

This salsa should last for up to a week if stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator.

Tips for making the best fresh tomato salsa

• Use high quality ingredients since there are only a few and the better produce you use the better the color and flavours you will get.
• Clean the seeds out of the tomatoes. This is an important step if you do not want a super watery salsa. If you are using cherry tomatoes then the seeds do not need to be cleaned out since they do not have as much water as larger tomatoes.
• Use a variety of tomatoes. I use a combination of vine tomatoes, Roma tomatoes and sweet cherry tomatoes and it was just heavenly.

What to serve with this recipe

Salsa can be paired with so many other things. Here are some of my favorites.

• Add it on top of a salad like this Chicken Taco Salad.
• Use it as a topping on this Crispy Air Fryer Chicken Breast or this Healthy Turkey Burger.
• Enjoy it with some eggs like these Veggie Egg White Bites or these Sausage and Pepper Egg Muffins.

Other healthy dips you may also enjoy!

• Easy 5 Minute Romesco Sauce
• 5 Minute Creamy Green Goddess Dressing
• Simple Roasted Beet Pesto
• Easy Homemade Lemon Basil Pesto Sauce

Recipe Variations

• Use any kind of tomatoes you like in this recipe. You can even use green tomatoes.
• Switch up the herbs and add in some parsley or basil.
• Use white onion, yellow onion or shallots in place of the red onion.
• To make this recipe fully vegan, use maple syrup, or coconut sugar in place of the honey.
• To make this recipe sugar free, use sugar free maple syrup or stevia as the sweetener in this recipe.

Did you try this recipe? If you did, then please leave a rating and comment below.

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