Let's set the record straight: if it's not cooked, it's not a salsa. This lark of chopping raw tomatoes, onions, chillies and add some lime juice and a truckload of coriander (cilantro) and call it a 'salsa' is completely preposterous in my books. Everyone who's ever been in one of my workshops knows how much I hate that. Call it a Pico de Gallo, a salad, a topping, but please, please, please, don't call it a salsa coz it's not.

We have tons of ways of making salsas and very family would have a favourite method and ingredients: sometimes we cook the ingredients and then blend them, sometimes we blend the ingredients and then cook them, but at some point in the making of the salsa process and with very rare expemptions, the ingredients are cooked. 

Now by cooking I loosely include things like toasting, charring, boiling, pan frying, oven or open fire roasting, grilling, etc. some salsas might require a couple of these methods at the same time, for example, If you are making of a mole, you will have to toast, pan fry and boil ingredients. Every salsa is different and there are thousands of recipes.

Having said all this, the salsa I'm sharing here with you is pretty much RAW.... and yes, I dare to call it a salsa!! Before you tell me this is a do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do-kinda-thing, let me tell you that the devil is in the detail, or better said in the name. By calling it 'raw' in Spanish we are heavily impling it's an unfinished salsa, a salsa that is yet to be cooked...  and the cooking is going to happen the moment you drop a couple of tablespoons in the very, very hot beef broth called Caldo de Res, which this salsa is destined to go to.  

So now you know why I'm making a 'raw' salsa and why I can call it a salsa. It is made as a topping or accompaniment to a particular dish called Caldo de Res. Although the salsa flavour is odd and unfinished to my taste, and let's face it, it doesn't look too attractive either, the minute it hits the hot broth on your plate, it'll instantly cook and it will add not only colour, but a wonderful taste to an otherwise plain and clean dish. If you have any of the salsa left, you can keep it in the fridge for up to a week, or you can turn it into a quick sauce for chilaquiles by cooking it in a little bit of onion and oil.

Go on, make this Caldo de Res and this raw sauce for dinner, it will change your world!