Home & Lifestyle, Food
Salsa Verde Cruda & Salsa Brava | Raw Salsas
Lesson time 14:21 min
Gabriela demonstrates how to prepare the two raw salsas found on every table at Contramar: salsa verde cruda, a vibrant tomatillo and avocado salsa, and salsa brava, a spicy mix of onions and habanero peppers.
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Topics include: Raw Green Salsa · Onion and Habanero Salsa
Teaches Mexican Cooking
Celebrated chef Gabriela Cámara shares her approach to making Mexican food that brings people together: simple ingredients, exceptional care.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] GABRIELA CAMARA: Salsas are fundamental for Mexicans. Salsas, I would say, are a signature stamp of cooks, of families, of places. Usually when you go to people's homes, they have a sauce that is their home sauce. They have a sauce that their grandmother made or that their aunt made or that has been in the family for generations somehow. And I feel the same thing about restaurants. Restaurants have their sauces. And you go to a restaurant or to a taco stand because they have a particular sauce that's very telling of a certain way of cooking or of a certain tradition, a certain family, or a certain locality. [MUSIC PLAYING] So I'm going to tell you how to make Salsa Verde Cruda, and this is one of my favorites. It's one of my staples at the restaurant and I love it. You don't cook anything in the salsa, everything is raw. And this is why it's called Salsa Verde Cruda. Cruda means raw, and this is exactly what it is. So we start with tomatillos. I prefer small tomatillos because the flavor is more concentrated and they're not bitter. And I have some tomatillos here that I want to show you with the skin. This is how they grow. So they grow in the plant, this is the little stem here. And they usually are covered in the skin. If you find them like this, covered, you just clean them. And you do not need to rinse them before you use them. So now what we're going to do is just finish peeling these. And we are going to prepare this very simple sauce by just putting everything in the blender. So here we go. The tomatillos have a very sticky sort of gel. It's a light resin that comes from that tomatillo. It's just enough that it that it gets your fingers dirty. So I will open the blender, put the tomatillos in here. And I put them whole, again because they're of a very small size. The second ingredient that we're going to use is this onion. And I'm going to again, chop it roughly just so that it goes into the blender and disintegrates easily. And we're going to put all these clean cilantro leaves. So again, we're going to do onion, tomatillos, cilantro, Serrano chiles. I'm going to destem them and just cut them in half so that they blend easy. Then, garlic, and I'm just to take the part that might not blend easy, cut it in half. And the secret of the sauce is to put lettuce. And I like to use Little Gems or cogollos in Spanish. And it's a very crunchy variety of lettuce. You can use Romaine. Sometimes when you're making salad and you leave the center of the lettuce, this is how I started making this sauce. I use the center of the lettuce to put into a green sauce just to give it a little bit of freshness and crispiness. And now I use Little Gems just because they're delicious and easy to find and it's a good way of using up everything and not wasting. So here we have a beautiful avocado. I'm going to use only half of it. And usually I don't need to make sure that it's beautifully peeled, but wh...
About the Instructor
A “star of modern Mexican cuisine,” Gabriela Cámara brings her local, sustainable twist to time-honored traditions. Now the chef of Contramar shares the richness of her culture through the art of food. Learn step-by-step recipes—for dishes of her own design, like tuna tostadas, and staples like tacos al pastor, salsa, and tortillas—and delight loved ones with your own delicious renditions of Mexican favorites.
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Gabriela Cámara
Celebrated chef Gabriela Cámara shares her approach to making Mexican food that brings people together: simple ingredients, exceptional care.
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