The key to mastering this salsa is a total pleasure-button—just eat a lot of it. You’ll learn what you personally like in the land of acidity, salt, heat, and creamy green. If you like things limey, add more lime; just know that more-lime leads to a more-liquid salsa. And if you want for sure juicy limes, squeeze test’em when purchasing. In my experience, limes that give upon squeeze are mas juicier. Like things creamy? Then more avocado, just know that creamy avocados can flatten the heat in jalapeño. Speaking of jalapeños, they’re finicky bitches. Sometimes, they’re just not hot, and sometimes they are fire. Attempting to pinpoint fire, I sniff jalapeños at the grocery store, trying to find the most-jalapeño-smelling-jalapeño, but that’s socially awkward after a while. So if I use two or three jalapeños and I’m still not getting the green-heat, then I switch to serranos—but only one. I use the good iodine-free Kosher salt, but no one else in my family is bougie this way. If your flavor is tasting flat, incrementally add ½ tsps of salt and retaste. All this goes to say, the whole thing is a balancing act. Just taste and adjust and taste and adjust and then give up. No one is ever gonna be unhappy when you show up with an imperfect batch of avocado tomatillo salsa.

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs. tomatillos
• 1/3 medium yellow or white onion
• Fat-large bunch of cilantro; no wimpy small bunch
• 2-3 jalapeños (and one back-up serrano if you want spice)
• 4-6 limes
• 1 large or two medium very very ripe tomatoes
• 2 very very ripe avocados
• 1-2 tsp. of Kosher salt

Prep:

Shuck the tomatillos; peel the skins off. The outside of the tomatillos will feel sticky. It’s fine. If the stickiness were poisonous, I would be dead. Halve the tomatillos; quarter the big ones. Rough chop the tomato, onion, and jalapeños—big chunks.

Blender or Food Processor Round One:

Dump in onion, jalapeño, tomatillo, cilantro. Just rip the cilantro in half and dump in stems and all. Run that machine. You want a fine chop from this blend. You may have to stop and shove the ingredients towards the bottom with a spoon. That’s fine. There’s enough liquid in the tomatillos that eventually things will get going.

Round two:

To this blended mix, add the juice of four limes. (If your limes are dry-toast, you’ll likely need to add one or two more.) Meat of two avocados. I just scoop the meat out using my fingers, which is sort of disgusting, but on the plus side, you get to lick avocado off your hands. Add tomatoes and salt. Blend. This blend will go faster because the base is already liquidy. I like some chunky avocado and tomato bits, so I blend less. Taste adjust. Taste adjust. Give up and gorge.