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What’s Inside?

July 15, 2016

Food | Inside Magazine

Let’s take a look at some of our favorite salsas and what makes them so delicious – and simple!

Technically, tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables, and long ago, the Central American hills were covered with rambling tomato vines that produced tasty little berries ranging from green, yellow and orange to bright red. Over time these fruits were coaxed into the larger forms that now flavor everything from soups and stews to sorbets on menus around the globe. One of the tomato’s most popular uses is salsa, a condiment originally devised by the Aztecs, that gets its bite from another New World native plant family: chiles.

Compared to their cousin the sweet bell pepper, chiles are vegetable dynamite. There are more than 150 varieties ranging from the mild serrano to the 10-alarm habanero, and some are hot enough to knock an unwary taster into kingdom come. The volatile oils and potent seeds contained in chiles are the source of their heat, but there’s never been anything better than a sauce laced with fiery chiles to make taste buds stand up and pay attention.

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This article was featured in Issue II of Inside Hormel Foods magazine. Click here to explore these unique collections of thought-provoking and heartwarming stories, recipes and features on our employees and the different areas of our company, all packaged up in a beautifully designed digital viewer for you.