Recipe: the perfectly burnt salsa
Burning food on embers creates wonderful flavour – perfect for a delicious salsa

It takes a bit of skill to do it, but burning food on embers creates wonderful flavour, says Martin Keane, the founder of Woodsmith. Take our perfectly burnt salsa, which involves cooking veg and citrus in the embers until they’re just so. After being skinned, chopped and squeezed, the ingredients are turned into a delicious salsa to dollop onto your favourite something grilled.
Ingredients: serves 8
- 8-10 logs (Applewood is best)
- 6 tomatoes
- 4 onions
- 4 peppers
- 6 chillies
- 1 bulb of garlic
- 2 limes
- Handful of chopped coriander
- 50ml olive oil
- Salt & pepper
Method
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
- Prepare your fire. Once you have a good bed of coals from the fire, you are ready to cook. All of the ingredients will be cooked directly in the embers so will remain whole and unpeeled until you have cooked them. You are essentially grilling and internally steaming all in one go, producing the most intense version of each vegetable.
- You will need to maintain a fire to continue to feed the cooking area with embers. But you will probably be cooking this salsa to accompany something else, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
- Start with the ingredients that will take longer to cook. So first up are your onions, placed directly on a flat bed of coals, raking around some more to give them a good covering. Ten minutes in you may need to start turning them. You want to completely blacken the skins, but stop short of burning through to the onion itself.
- Next up will follow the whole garlic bulb, then peppers, tomatoes, limes and chillies at five-minute intervals. Continue to turn the veg so no one side burns, and you maintain an overall even char. Once you arrive at the “perfectly burnt” stage, remove all of your veg and put it into a bowl covered with cling film, or an airtight container. You want the veg to steam and cool down.
- Once they’re cool enough to handle, remove all of the skins and seeds from the vegetables and chop. We find it easiest to do this on a big board. Once all the veg is chopped up, add the coriander, squeeze in the limes and chop some more. Finally add the oil, salt and pepper and bring together.
Woodsmith stocks a variety of natural woods and charcoals for outdoor cooking, all grown in Somerset. See woodsmithwood.com for further details.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Gandhi arrests: Narendra Modi's 'vendetta' against India's opposition
The Explainer Another episode threatens to spark uproar in the Indian PM's long-running battle against the country's first family
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK
-
How the woke right gained power in the US
Under the radar The term has grown in prominence since Donald Trump returned to the White House
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK
-
Codeword: April 24, 2025
The Week's daily codeword puzzle
By The Week Staff
-
Film reviews: Sinners and The King of Kings
Feature Vampires lay siege to a Mississippi juke joint and an animated retelling of Jesus' life
By The Week US
-
Music reviews: Bon Iver, Valerie June, and The Waterboys
Feature "Sable, Fable," "Owls, Omens, and Oracles," "Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper"
By The Week US
-
Susan Page's 6 favorite books about historical figures who stood up to authority
Feature The USA Today's Washington bureau chief recommends works by Catherine Clinton, Alexei Navalny, and more
By The Week US
-
Trinidadian doubles recipe
The Week Recommends 'Dangerously addictive', this traditional Caribbean street food is the height of finger-licking goodness
By Rebekah Evans, The Week UK
-
Book reviews: 'The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip' and 'Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service'
Feature The tech titan behind Nvidia's success and the secret stories of government workers
By The Week US
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin America
Feature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
By The Week US
-
Exploring the three great gardens of Japan
The Week Recommends Beautiful gardens are 'the stuff of Japanese landscape legends'
By The Week UK
-
One-pan black chickpeas with baharat and orange recipe
The Week Recommends This one-pan dish offers bold flavours, low effort and minimum clean up
By The Week UK