Christmas Salsa

How gorgeous are these colors, right? I am making salsa for Christmas gifts and so I solicited the help of a professional. I had my father-in-law, Anastacio spend the afternoon with us showing me the ropes of how it's really done.
We went grocery shopping together. We got Serrano chilies, habanero chilies, & jalapeno chilies. Also included was garlic, onions, cilantro, lemons, tomatoes, and tomatillos. Goodness, the shopping part was so fun. It was great asking my dad all the questions I wanted to about our ingredients.
Anastacio roasts all his chilies and the red tomatoes before they are used. Peeling the skins was time-consuming. I think I will omit this step the next time. I didn't notice a difference in taste with them roasted although I do love the bits of charred skin peppered through the salsa. We boiled the tomatillos in water until they were remarkably changed in color.
These bad boys were canned for 15 minutes in a lovely water bath. I think I'll do this again for our salsa stock pile. I spent $30 for 12 jars. Down side? You eat a jar a day. Cristian, Carlos and I quite enjoyed salsa verde all day today. Fabulous on my scrambled eggies!!

And the few pointers that I picked up yesterday from my dad are:

1. Always use the round tomatoes. The Roma tomatoes are too sweet and beef steak don't taste well for salsa. The round ones have a sourness to them that is perfect for salsa.
2. Cilantro. I've always wondered if I was suppose to pick off the leaves and then chop. Use all of it. I chopped it all very fine and put it in a bowl to the side. I cleaned all my produce with a food cleaner. There were tiny gnats everywhere in the cilantro. I rinsed/swished it 6x before it all came clean. Disgusting!
3. This salsa is a smooth salsa. It isn't chunky like pico de gallo. We used a blender for all the ingredients. After it was blended smoothly we added additional cilantro and finely chopped onion to give it mild texture.
4. If you are eating the salsa all that day you can add avocado to it. It is so delicious, but needs to be eaten or the avo spoils. Is that ever really an issue though with salsa?
5. Lemon is your friend with salsa. I find especially with the green salsa, lemon just makes it better and better tasting.
6. If you want spicy salsa, turn up the heat with your peppers. You want your salsa to be flavorful with heat, but not so hot that it overpowers the flavors of the other ingredients.
7. Peppers - jalapenos are the mildest, Serrano's are next in heat, habaneros are fire. So jalapeno, Serrano, habaneros. We used all three in both salsas. They are so yummy!