Roasted Tomatillo Sauce

I ended up getting about 3 lbs. of tomatillos from my 3 surviving plants. That's actually not much. Tomatillos are supposed to be very prolific. I blame the deer and chickens for damaging the plants so they didn't yield as well.

Tomatillos keep well in their husks in the vegetable drawer in the fridge. I was able to stash them in there until I had enough saved up for a batch of roasted tomatillo sauce. I got the recipe off the internet, but soon found out this isn't really something that needs a recipe. Everything can be done to taste.

Peel the husks off like 2 or 3 lbs. of tomatillos and rinse them. Lay them out on a baking sheet with some serranos and/or jalapenos (cut the stems off) and peel whole garlic cloves. As you can see, the peppers I used had already turned red, which was not intentional, but I didn't get to them while they were still green.

Put under the broiler until the veggies are getting brown in spots and soften. The tomatillos will sort of get squishy and collapse and the juice will run out. Yum.

Let it cool, and then scrape everything in the blender, making sure to get all the juice in. Add cilantro, salt, and lime juice to taste. Blend until smooth.

I put mine in plastic containers and froze it. You can also water-bath can this, but in that case you'd need to be much more careful with the ratios and use an exact recipe. It's especially important to put enough lime juice in to make it acidic enough to be safe.

I didn't put much lime juice in so I can slather it over enchiladas, but more lime would probably be better if you wanted it as a dip. When I tasted it, it also turned out hotter than I intended. I made the mistake of not de-seeding the peppers, and peppers you grow yourself tend to get hotter when the weather is hotter and the plants are under stress. But otherwise it was really tasty.

Speaking of chickens, one day the neighbor's chickens jumped the back fence (they usually stay in the front), and dug through my herb garden. Then two of them forgot how to get back out and just kept pacing back and forth by the fence like they wanted to go home but forgot they can jump over. Stupid chickens! We had to open the gate and herd them out.