Pico de Gallo is a great side dish to any meal. It’s surprisingly quick and easy to make and looks spectacular on the dinner table with a multitude of spicy or mild dishes. It’s a colorful quick dish that speaks for itself, and it goes with so many types of food.
Anyone can make homemade Pico de Gallo with so few ingredients, so there’s no reason to get store-bought versions. Yours will be better, fresher, and tastier. So, what are you waiting for?
Let’s get dicing and slicing, and you can make your own amazing Pico de Gallo with these 9 easy recipes.
The most incredible thing about Pico de Gallo is what a fresh, flavorful boost it gives to any dish without adding unhealthy ingredients. It’s so healthy and low in calories and fat, but it tastes so good.
Few things in life are as forgiving on the scales after indulging in several servings of them in one sitting. Pico de Gallo is the only thing we can think of unless you love gorging on lettuce. If you do, lucky you.
The rest of us prefer something more indulgent, but that doesn’t have to be unhealthy necessarily.
They recommend using really ripe red tomatoes to make the flavors balance perfectly, and advise that you wait for fifteen minutes before serving when you’re done to let the flavors mingle together.
They advise chopping the ingredients more finely if they’re being served as a tortilla chip dip. At only 29 calories a serving, you’re going to want to do twice as much as their recommended 4 portions per batch.
For your information, coriander is what the British call cilantro. It’ll save you Googling it later. Interestingly, they use red onion in this recipe, but a lot of people prefer white onions for the task. The color would look pretty, though, so maybe give it a try.
This Pico de Gallo recipe has a few extra ingredients than the last two and specifies Roma plum tomatoes for their recipe.
The All Recipes guys are clearly red onion fans too, and they must like garlic a lot as well because they specify 1 clove of garlic as well as a pinch of garlic powder for their Pico de Gallo. Mmmh, garlicky.
They think that red or yellow tomatoes are fine, but they should be seeded. We love the taste of yellow tomatoes, but one of our favorite things about Pico de Gallo is the pop of color it makes on the table and on the dish. It’s just not the same without the red.
In terms of where they stand on the onion debate, they just specify that whatever onion you use should be small and that you should use one of them, but they do recommend Serrano chilies above jalapeños.
Bear in mind that Serrano chilies are around five times hotter than the traditional jalapeños, so don’t use these if you don’t like your food too spicy.
While the recipe itself is pretty standard, it does give extra options to make your Salsa Fresca unique. They suggest using creative add-ins like cucumber, bell pepper, mango, or peaches to make it your own.
And the secret that turns regular homemade Pico salsa into Mexican restaurant quality? You let it rest and leave it for a day in the refrigerator. This is so the flavors meld together to create the perfect taste in every bite.
And here we’d expect a restaurant to serve us fresh Pico de Gallo, not day-old leftovers, but hey, if that’s how they do it in Mexico, then who are we to judge? It turns out good Salsa Fresca isn’t so fresh after all.
This recipe holds an interesting tip for lovers of spice, like us. They recommend leaving in the chili seeds and spongy white membrane inside the chili peppers for extra fire for your Pico de Gallo.
Whether you’re all for seeds in or seeds out, make sure you mince the chili really small, so you never bite into a huge chunk. This recipe creator must love the heat because they also suggest Serrano peppers for a fiery hot pot or Jalapeños for something milder.
This recipe strongly recommends fresh lime juice over bottle stuff, because it should taste fresh and vibrant, whereas bottled lime juice doesn’t have the same effect. They also advise letting the Pico de Gallo rest for a few minutes before serving.
This fresh recipe from Love and Lemons is on the white onion side of the fence, although they do say you could substitute them for red onions or sliced scallions to mix it up a bit.
The recipe is pretty classic in terms of ingredients, but we did notice they propose using lime zest as well as the juice of fresh lime.
That does sound great for fresh summer dishes. We cannot quite get on board with some of their substitution ideas for the tomatoes, though. We just don’t feel convinced about the combination of chili peppers and strawberries quite yet. Call us crazy.
Downshiftology.com claims to have the recipe for the best Pico de Gallo recipe you’ve ever had.
Well, that is quite the claim, but let’s see how it differs from the ones we’ve seen so far. They do say that most restaurants in Mexico will use Serrano peppers in their Pico de Gallo unless they think you’re a tourist, in which case they might take it down a few notches in terms of spice.
If you’re dead set on an authentic Mexican side dish, then you’re going to have to go with the Serrano pepper.
Maybe it’s not looking that important to be authentic anymore, huh? Just use the pepper you like eating, is our advice.
Like some of the others, this recipe advises making the dish in advance of serving it to let it rest, and it’s also in favor of a finely chopped Salsa Fresca over a chunky one so that all the flavors will be in every mouthful.
They think that the secret to a perfect Pico de Gallo is in using the freshest ingredients and not going easy on the salt.
If there was one ingredient that can make this dish less healthy, it’s the adding of refined salt. If you’re serving it with tortilla chips, then they add more salt to every bite, so just be mindful of that when you’re being heavy-handed with the salt shaker.
The Mexican Food Journal suggests that Roma (plum) tomatoes are the best to use in a Pico de Gallo, and they are in favor of white onion over red or scallions. Furthermore, they suggest deseeding the tomatoes too and discarding the pulp and juice.
They should know about what makes an authentic Pico de Gallo, and they say that the classic ingredients of tomatoes, onion, cilantro, chili pepper, lime juice, and salt is all you need to make the best Pico de Gallo.
They say it goes well as a topping for every chicken, beef, fish, and veggie Mexican dish as well as going great with other meals that aren’t even considered Mexican. Their top tip is not to serve the Pico de Gallo too cold, or it will taste “flat”.
Most people agree that room temperature is best for this delicious dish.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, that has given you some inspiration to funk up your classic Pico de Gallo recipes, and also gives you some ideas for serving as a side to dishes you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. There’s just nothing like a traditional, fresh, zesty Pico de Gallo, and now you know how to make it too.
