Chuck Evans gifted us with this jar of salsa goodness back at the 2008 North Market Fiery Foods Festival, so we decided to crack this jar of Raspberry Lime Salsa open right ahead of this coming weekend’s Cinco D’Ohio festival just to get a taste (no pun intended) of some of the stuff which will be available there at the show. Now I will admit to not being the biggest fan of fruit salsas in general or even to chipotle, so I hoped to give this a more fair & balanced take on it. For one thing, it’s hard to go wrong with this list of ingredients:

Ingredients: tomatoes, tomato puree, onions, red raspberries in syrup, chile peppers, Smokey Chipotle (R) pepper sauce, lime juice, lemon juice, vinegar, herbs and spices

Now this is the kind of list we like to see in the products we try…nothing but real ingredients without any chemical-sounding names of ingredients. Here’s the description of the salsa from Chuck’s website:

Chuck’s very original mild red raspberry salsa is spiked with fresh lime juice along with a hint of smokey chipotle providing layers of flavor. Serve over a block of cream cheese; top off a char-grilled pork chop; or drizzle over vanilla ice cream. Provecho!

Taste: We didn’t do anything fancy-shmancy with this salsa, but rather just ate it straight out of the jar with some tortilla chips. Given the recipe suggestions above, we wanted to try it au natural to see how it would do unadulterated by other stuff. The result? This was a surprisingly good salsa that Joe had to be restrained from finishing all in one sitting! The salsa base is a little on the thin side, but has big chunks of tomatoes and raspberries to whet your appetite. The heat is indeed on the mild side as the label suggests, perhaps 3/10 for heat, but the incredible taste will make you forget that it’s not all that hot & spicy. Great combination of chipotle flavor as well, which isn’t too smoky or sweet with the fruit in the salsa. It has a smooth flavor that really balances the peppery flavor with the combination of raspberry and lime.

Although we didn’t try it ourselves, take Chuck’s hints about the cream cheese and pork chops. This salsa would be amazing with those. You could certainly do this with ice cream or just about any dessert, and we think this would be great drizzled over cheesecake. Yum!

Overall recommendation: For those of you who think that fruit salsas are too sweet or may not truly be in to the flavor of chipotle…then this is the salsa for you. It’s definitely on the milder side of the chilehead spectrum, but it has enough heat to keep you interested at least. While you can find lots of uses in cooking for this salsa, it really is good straight out of the jar. We’d love to see a spicier version of this someday, but for now we’ll be licking the insides of the jar until we need to get some more. Try some for yourself and see what you think. Enjoy!

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