What do tomatillos taste like? Fresh tomatillos have a unique flavor that is tart, bright and almost citrusy. They are mainly eaten cooked, but can also be prepared raw. When roasted, tomatillos become a little sweeter and lose some of their tartness. Tomatillos have a slightly more acidic, slightly less sweet flavor than ripe and unripe tomatoes. Overall, the flavor is more vegetal and bright, and the interior texture is denser and less watery.
Prepping a tomatillo is pretty straight forward. The first batch was great. I dirced all ingredients to smaller than 2mm pieces, mixed it all together and it was lovely. For the second batch I decided that I didn't have the time to dice everything by hand I am not very fast with a knife and so I threw everything in the blender and blended until it was a frothy brown liquid.
The second batch was very bitter despite being made from the same quantities of each ingredient, all of which had been purchased on the day and everything was fresh. Is there something about the liquifying my ingredients that caused my second batch to be bitter that would not have been caused by dicing them?
While I haven't heard of it happening for the specific ingredients you list, yes, the blender can make stuff really bitter. There are two ways this can happen. First, a chemical reaction. A blender really churns the stuff through, driving lots of air bubbles into the mixture with some force. It also causes friction heat, especially professional grade blenders like vitamix.
The heat, force and large reaction surface can cause the oxygen in the air to enter a reaction with the ingredients which doesn't happen when using a milder method for cutting up.
Olive oil is a known culprit here, it usually turns bitter when blended, but it can happen with other stuff too. Besides oxygen, a chemical reaction can also happen between two ingredients coming from two different vegetables, which would not have been mixed well enough in the knife scenario to produce noticeable amounts of reaction product.
The second possibility is releasing stuff which would have stayed "packed" without the blender. A knife will only damage the plant cells at the cut surfaces, and a blunt knife, if used with a somewhat inefficient technique, might even break very ripe vegetables along the cell walls instead of cutting through the cells.
If there are mini-droplets of something bitter within the plant cells, it is possible that the blender which really cuts cells into pieces released these things. On a more macro level, it is also possible that we are not talking mini-droplets, but just plant parts which didn't get cut with the knife.
Stray pepper seeds come in mind: you probably didn't cut any with the knife, they tend to be pushed by a knife instead of cut when you are cutting the pepper. The blender pulverizes everything that hits the blades, including these seeds.
But the different methods of mincing vegetables are not equivalent, and can have very noticeable effects on taste and texture beyond the obvious chunk size. The bitterness you encountered is only one example. Although they were peeled, it doesn't sound like they were juiced. The membrane in the fruit could've contributed to the bitterness as well. Sometimes the best recipe is the one with the least ingredients.
I'd use the juice of the citrus and leave out the rest of it. The membranes can be bitter. I'd also remove the seeds and the pith from the peppers. Leave in some of the seeds if you want more heat. Thanks guys! I'll try some simplification and report back to you! I agree with Andy.
I think it was the citrus pith that made it bitter. I've never had a bitter pepper but citrus pith and old garlic can definitely be bitter. Hey Beer Me, Have you ever tried roasting the peppers? Makes for a really good smokey flavor in the salsa.
I would suggest a "spoonful of sugar" Many times that's enough to cut the "bitterness" which is sometimes just the tomatoes. It is definately not "sweet" Good luck!
Hey guys, just wanted to give you an update. I've been working out the kinks in my salsa recipe, and I think I have it down. I figured out what the original off flavor was - onion. The amount of red onion I used was was too much.
I cut it in half and changed to a sweet onion, and voila! Thanks again to everyone who helped me out! BB code is On. Smilies are On.
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