5large tomatillos or a dozen small ones, husked and halved
2Hatch chiles,or Anaheim or poblano chiles
6green onions, roughly chopped
2 or 3avocados, pitted and skins removed
1 or 2unpeeled garlic cloves(see below)
1/3cupchopped cilantro
Lime juice and salt to taste
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425°F as you are husking the tomatillos and chopping the other ingredients. Don't mess with the avocados just yet.
When the oven is hot, put the halved tomatillos and the chiles on a baking sheet and roast until the tomatillos have some blackening, and the chile skins are well blackened on all sides. The tomatillos may take less time than the chiles. If you want roasted garlic, add this with the chiles and tomatillos and remove when partially blackened. All this should take about 20 minutes or so.
ALTERNATE METHOD: You can char the chiles directly on a gas flame or grill. I prefer this method, but it involves constantly moving the chiles to evenly blacken.
When things are well charred, put the tomatillos in a blender, peel the garlic and put the cloves in the blender, and remove the skin, stem and seeds of the chiles and put the chiles in the blender, too. Add the cilantro, green onions and avocado to the blender, along with some salt and about 1 tablespoon of lime juice. (NOTE: If you like raw garlic, you can skip the roasting step and just add a peeled clove right to the blender.)
Puree everything and add more salt or lime juice to taste.
ALTERNATE METHOD: You can make this a raw salsa by skipping all the cooking steps and simply pureeing everything in the blender. This takes seconds and is great for making this salsa on a hot day.
Video
Notes
Variations and Keys to Success
You want fully ripe avocados, even with a few blemishes. Underripe, hard avocados are not good here.
Tomatillos can be either the big supermarket ones, or the little tomatillos de milpa.
I prefer hot Hatch chiles, roasted by hand. Poblanos are my second choice. But any roasted green chile will do, even canned ones. Don't want to roast chiles? Skip them and use anything from jalapenos to serranos or even green chiltepins or pequins.
Roasting garlic with the tomatillos and chiles mellows it, so if you don't like raw garlic, do this instead.
I use green onions, but you can use chopped white onion.
You can vary things by using alternate herbs instead of cilantro like pipicha, papaloquelites, huacatay, hoja santa or even epazote. If you have access to culantro, that will taste almost exactly like cilantro.