With ingredients like fresh cranberries, jalapeños, green pepper, and lime juice, this Cranberry Salsa offers a colorful dip that’s sweet with a touch of tartness and mild spice.
Dips and salsas are the ultimate party food. You make a big batch, set it out for the masses, and refill the chips/veggies/whatever as needed. It’s just easy, and I think it’s an important part of any food spread at a gathering.
Whether it’s Cowboy Caviar, Pumpkin Cream Cheese Dip, or this Cranberry Salsa, you can tailor your dip to the type of event and preference of your guests. For today’s recipe—which is actually one of the first recipes I ever shared on this blog—I like to make it around the fall and winter holidays, since it uses fresh cranberries and is festively colored.
One of the best parts about this and many other dips, you can (and should) make it ahead of time. As all the flavors are marrying as it chills, you can spend your time on whatever else you have going on.
I think my favorite part about this fresh salsa recipe is how such different flavors combine to create a unique-tasting dish. In addition to the tart cranberries, you’ve got green pepper, jalapeños, green onion, cilantro, and lime juice to make things interesting. And with the added cumin, salt, and sugar (kind of necessary with the sourness of the cranberry), it turns into this very different-tasting appetizer.
If you want to make a spicy cranberry salsa concoction, just keep some or all of the seeds from the jalapeños. I always remove them all, since there’s still a tiny bit of a zestiness to the salsa, but like I said above, plan your dip based on your guests (or yourself, this isn’t just party food)!
I made this for a Halloween party I went to this past weekend (I’ve been wanting an excuse to make it for awhile). When I finally spotted the cranberries on the shelf at the grocery store (fall produce FTW), it was as if the stars had aligned. Cranberries are available? I’m going to a party soon? Cranberry Salsa it is!
Ingredients:
- 1 (12-oz) package cranberries
- 1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
- 1/4 cup finely chopped green pepper
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 2 jalapeño peppers, deseeded and chopped (keep seeds for spicy dip)
- 1/4 cup fresh lime juice (approx. 2 limes)
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp cumin
Instructions:
- Add the cranberries to a food processor, and pulse until they're chopped into small pieces.
- In a bowl, mix the chopped cranberries with the remaining ingredients.
- Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes to let the flavors mingle.
- Serve with tortilla chips.
I don’t usually like adding a bunch of sugar to recipes, especially when I share them on here, but I think there’s still a lot of benefit to consuming fruits and veggies…even if you need a bit of sweetness to make them palatable.
I did, however, cut down on the amount in the recipe I used as inspiration for this one. Originally at 1/2 cup of sugar, I tried halving it to only 1/4 cup, but the salsa was too sour for my taste, so I think 1/3 cup is just enough to make it pleasantly sweet without going overboard.
The original version of this post was published on November 27, 2012.
