Chips & Salsa (one of the staples).
Chips and Salsa – FREE, Always a complimentary item to get your tastebuds going or to hold you over if you came to drink. Any decent Tex-Mex establishment will have a stainless steel and glass cabinet with a heat lamp. It looks like a popcorn maker without the hardware. What it is, is a well designed receptacle to keep the chips warm and fresh. At most places it will hold about 4 cu ft of chips which can be scooped out from the bottom into a paper lined basket. As long as the chips are relatively fresh and were cooked in clean oil they should be great by the time they hit your table and the free refills will be just as good.
Chips should be deep fried corn tortillas cut into quarters and lightly salted. They can be slightly thinner than a normal corn tortilla but not so thin that they crumble when trying to get the salsa from the bowl into your mouth and drop salsa all over you shirt. The Salsa can be one of a few acceptable versions. Red, brown or green.
Red is the prevailing champion around town. Made from fresh ingredients. Mainly tomatoes and onions with jalapeño, cilantro, garlic, vinegar and lime. If this sounds familiar it should because it is also the base ingredients for pico de gallo. In Salsa form, it gets chucked into a blender, liquidized down to a smooth purée, then cooked just long enough for the flavors to mingle. Served in a rustic plastic bowl in the shape of a molcajete which used to be used to create the purée before modern conveniences.
Brown salsa is basically the same as red but before you chop or puree the vegetables you roast them directly over a flame to blacken the outside skin. The charring of the vegetables is what gives the salsa its brown color and smokey flavor. Good stuff Maynard!
Green salsa (salsa verde) is pretty close to the red but using tomatillos instead of tomatoes. All three different sauces can be as mild or as spicy as you want based on how much jalapeño you include and how long it sits in it’s vinegar base. Some restaurants have very weak salsa but if you return 2 days later when the batch is running low you get the HEAT. It also depends on which cook was making the salsa. If you get salsa from a cook who smokes, it going to be hotter and always saltier. It is always good to test a small amount on the first bite.
When you start adding exotic ingredients like green chilis or guajillo peppers you have headed out of Texas with your tastes. Yes some “Real Texans” (local idiots) will slip some serranos and habaneros in salsa to prove their machismo. What it ends up proving is that you can no longer taste anything or sit down after destroying your mouth, tastebuds, throat, stomach lining, large and small intestine, colon and sphincter. YeeHa!
