Salsa has too long been a bastion for the onion, but it's totally unnecessary. Unless you want your salsa to taste like armpit, toss out the onion and go back to the core elements that make a salsa great. If you're really not into the DIY thing, there is one commercially available salsa with no onions, and it's excellent. I've posted a review here: Salsa With No Onions What does salsa absolutely have to have for it to be valid? Chili peppers. You need other stuff too, but that is the only ingredient I'm calling non-negotiable. One of the things to think about before you begin is appearance. If you mix red ingredients and green, you end up with brown salsa; not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you are big on appearances, either pick one or the other, or keep the chunks big. I'll put up a list of things I've found to be good salsa ingredients. Pick and choose what you like or have on hand. I'd recommend at least one item from each section: Chilies (mandatory): Habanero. Great flavor, but deadly hot (orange). Fresno peppers: Excellent and quite hot (red). Jalepeno: Boring, but easily available, hot (green). Poblano and Anaheim: Mild, and ...

There is a story behind this chili. The first time I made chili, it was for a chili cookoff. I'm not a big fan of beans, so I decided to make a chili without beans, and of course, like everything on this site, this is a chili without onions. I decided that what I really needed was to replace the missing ingredients with something fitting that wouldn't seem like filler. I wanted it to be very meaty, which more than makes up for the lack of beans. I wanted the flavor to be fruity and smoky, like pipe tobacco, but fiery enough to make you think you had just dropped the coals on your tongue. Going to our local Co-op, I found my answers. Dried cherries (nothing added) and Fresh, rather green mangoes. They also had a fresh shipment of beautiful red, fiery Fresno peppers. As I picked one up, I noticed the produce sticker with its SKU#: 666. Chili of the beast was conceived. I picked up quite a few other ingredients while I was out. If you plan to make this, you should read the full process first so you know what you are getting into. Lets start with the meat: Turn ...

This one is in honor of Stanza over at CookingOnSundays, who couldn't make it today, but the people must be fed! True to Stanza fashion, this one is a soup made from stuff I had sitting in the freezer in the garage (I don't have a closet) for too long, and that is the way it should be made, but with no onions! Any time you are looking for something in one of your many food storage options and you find there is just too much stuff you have to move out of the way, it is time to make some variant of what I erroneously call Jambalaya. Every year, we plant a garden in the back yard, and impatiently wait for all the little sprouts to sprout, and then spend a portion of each day urging the cats to keep the gophers out, and yelling at the cats that the garden is not a litter box. Then we complain that there are snails and we need to get the chickens to eat them, which ends with us flapping our arms as we chase the chickens out because they are kicking up the sprouts and eating our lettuce. Somehow, a couple months ...

A blend of my own devising, the Five Pillars of Greatness are like the Army in my war on the Allium menace; first in and last out. I use it in some form in over half of the main dishes I prepare. I don't keep it as a blend, I just reserve a section of the spice cabinet for the unground components, and mix and grind them on demand. I vary the relative quantities, but here is a general starting point:   Cardamon: 1 part (brightness and good cheer) Pink peppercorns: 4 parts (central aroma and top note) Cumin 4 parts (richness and breadth) Cubeb: 2 parts (depth and complexity) Pequin peppers: 4 parts (fire and brimstone) One recipe I'll post here because it is both simple and extremely specialized. This one is only good for Taco Bell tacos or similar fast food. Add 1 tbsp of Five Pillars to three packets of Taco Bell fire packets. The resulting napalm is tasty enough on tacos to make sure those grons never come back!

  You know how sometimes you are eating and you come across a little burst of flavor and you wonder what spice it was? Chances are good it was cumin. The little seed is quite a chameleon, with a flavor that is both strong and iconic, yet blends with the flavor of a dish in such a way that a new flavor is born that is greater than the sum of its parts. You can find it in massive quantity along with peppers and garlic powder in that cheapo curry powder that forms the base of so much commercial Americanized Mexican food. I use cumin myself as a brute force flavor for taco meat, but it also has a great deal of complexity to add to a variety of classier dishes. Its raw flavor is a strong and a bit on the green side. If you toast it the force of the flavor subsides into a lighter, more complex spice suitable for less potent fare, but over toasting it will leave you with something bitter and undesirable. It is a strong spice, but I always find myself adding more as I cook. Make sure you label it well in whatever spice ...