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Pico de Gallo

(Stop Buying This, Part 4: The Refrigerated Tub Edition)

Pico de gallo is chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, chopped cilantro, lime juice, and salt. That's it. That's the entire genre. And yet you walked into the produce section, picked up a plastic tub of it for six dollars, glanced at the sticker date like a person making an informed decision, and put it in your cart. The tub contains: tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime, and salt. You also have tomatoes, onion, cilantro, lime, and salt. The only thing you don't have is the tub. We can fix that. Get a bowl.

Prep: 10 min Cook: LOL no Rest: 15 min Makes: About 2 cups If You Can Dice
A glass bowl of finished pico de gallo with diced Roma tomatoes, red onion, and chopped cilantro
This is what pico looks like when you drain the tomatoes. The bowl is not full of juice. That's the whole job.

Ingredients

That's the whole list. Six things. And one of them is optional.

Instructions

  1. Dice the tomatoes small. About ¼-inch pieces. Then toss them into a colander or fine-mesh strainer over the sink and walk away for 5-10 minutes while you do the rest. Pico de gallo's entire pitch is fresh and crunchy. Watery pico is sad pico, and watery pico is the pico of someone who skipped this step.
  2. Finely dice the red onion. Smaller than the tomatoes — roughly a quarter the size. If your onion chunks are bigger than your tomato chunks, the onion will bully the tomato in every single bite and that's not the dish.
  3. (Optional pro move.) Soak the diced onion in cold water for 5 minutes, then drain. This pulls the harsh sulfur edge off raw red onion without killing the bite. Do this if you find raw red onion aggressive. Don't do it if you don't. Either is fine.
  4. Chop the cilantro. About ⅓ cup, roughly chopped, stems and all. The stems have flavor. Throwing them out is a habit you picked up from someone who was wrong, and you can stop doing it now.
  5. (If using jalapeño.) Seed and finely mince. Seeds in for hot, seeds out for medium, skip the jalapeño entirely for mild. Then wash your hands. Wash them again. You will eventually touch your face today and you will deeply regret it if you didn't wash your hands twice.
  6. Combine everything in a bowl. Drained tomatoes, onion, cilantro, salt, and the juice of one lime. Toss gently. Gently. You're not making a slurry, you're tossing a salad.
  7. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes at room temperature before serving. The salt and lime need a minute to pull the flavors together. If you eat it the second you mix it, it tastes like a bowl of chopped vegetables. Which, fine, it technically is. But after fifteen minutes it tastes like pico, and pico is the thing you actually wanted.
  8. Taste before serving. If it's flat, add more lime. If it's still flat after the lime, add more salt. That is the entire seasoning logic, top to bottom. There is no third move.

Things People Skip and Then Wonder Why

  • Drain the tomatoes. This is the number one thing people skip and it is the number one reason your pico de gallo is bad. Five minutes in a colander. That's the whole ask. Pico without drained tomatoes is a watery pool of tomato juice with stuff floating in it. Don't serve a soup.
  • Roma tomatoes, not big slicing tomatoes. Romas are meatier and less seedy. They were built for this. If you only have beefsteak, vine, or whatever giant tomato is rolling around your counter, scoop the seeds and the watery middle out before you dice. Otherwise see the previous bullet, plus you'll be dicing tomato slime.
  • Lime is the volume knob. If your pico tastes flat, ninety percent of the time it needs more lime, not more salt. Add lime first. If it's still flat after that, then add salt. Reversing this order is how you end up with a salty pico that you can't fix.
  • Serve same-day. Pico is a fresh salsa, not a fermented one. It is at its best in the first four hours and it starts going watery and sad after that. Don't make it the night before. Make it an hour before. Or fifteen minutes before. It will not punish you for being late.

Stuff You'll Need

A cutting board. A sharp knife. A colander (yes, for the tomatoes, we just covered this). A medium bowl. A spoon to toss with. The dignity to admit that you have, in fact, paid six dollars for a plastic tub of this in the past, and the resolve to never do it again.