You will wonder how you ever lived without this recipe. Store–bought salsa is hard to muscle down once this beauty is introduced! And, bonus, it is low in sodium!

This recipe was given to me by a dear friend about a decade ago. And since chips and salsa are my favorite meal, thing in life, appetizer; it goes without saying that I need a good little fella that I can depend on. It is part of a trifecta we have when serving Mexican dishes in our home, along with guacamole and pico de gallo. I base Mexican restaurants first and foremost on their ability to deliver a good batch of chips and salsa before my bean and cheese burrito arrives. If they fail me in the chips and salsa department, there really can be no success.

I did make a couple changes to my friend’s recipe. It was totally delicious in its original format, totally divine. I am often hesitant to make changes to recipes that I adore with the intent to healthify them due to the fear that they won’t be as good. But, I took my chances and reduced the garlic salt and seasoning salt by half and found that the recipe was still so good! That’s a savings of 2300 mg of sodium people! 

Does that number mean nothing to you because you don’t know how much sodium you are supposed to be getting a day? Or, what all the hub-bub is about if you get too much sodium? Sodium has an important role in fluid balance in our bodies. Excessive sodium can lead to fluid retention, contribute to high blood pressure, be a factor in kidney stone development, and impact many disease states such as heart and kidney diseases. According to the CDC, most Americans average about 3400 mg of sodium daily, compared to the recommendation of 2300 mg daily. In working with clients over the years, I’ve found that most of us blow this recommendation out of the water!

Sodium is a mineral that is naturally found in foods as well as added to food through sodium chloride, which is a fancy pants name for what we know as “salt”. Most of the salt that we consume, about 70% of it, is found within processed foods and at the restaurants we eat. So often I’ll be providing counsel to patients on a low sodium diet and they are perplexed because they “don’t add salt to their food” but then proceed to tell me about the packaged/canned/frozen foods they use and/or are eating out several times a week or even multiple times a day! 

Once you find a sturdy salsa recipe to help you weather the storms of life, it’s hard to go back to store bought salsa. Am I right? This will be that for you. And bonus, the reduction in sodium is good for your health.

The Recipe