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Mix up fresh citrus for this super salsa

Recipe: Citrus salsa with fresh orange, mandarin, kumquat and lime

Sacramento Digs Gardening
BY Debbie Arrington PUBLISHED FEB 9, 2025

Mixed chopped citrus pieces make a bright and lively salsa. Serve it at a meal with meats or Southwestern dishes, or with tortilla chips for an appetizer. Debbie Arrington

This versatile salsa is like a bite of winter sunshine. And for the backyard farmer, it makes the most of what you’ve got.

Like many gardeners with home-grown citrus, I often end up with an assortment of (precious few) fruit. Small citrus trees yield harvests that I can count on my fingers. What do you do with a handful of kumquats?

It’s the kumquats that add something extra to this juicy mix; their edible skin give the salsa some extra crunch and zest.

For this batch, I used one orange, two mandarins and three kumquats to make the 1 cup chopped citrus. Grapefruit and tangerine work, too.

Citrus for salsa — A mix of citrus makes a lively salsa.

Chop the ingredients smaller if you plan to serve alongside chips. Otherwise, this citrus salsa makes a flavorful accompaniment to seafood, chicken, pork, steak or Southwestern fare such as steak tacos or pork enchiladas.

Citrus salsa

Makes about 1-1/2 cups

Ingredients:

1 cup mixed chopped citrus such as orange, mandarin, kumquat, tangerine or grapefruit

Juice of 1 lime, preferably Mexican lime

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons red onion, finely chopped

2 tablespoons green onion, finely chopped

1 tablespoon cilantro, finely chopped

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

1/8 teaspoon garlic salt

Instructions:

Prepare fruit. Peel and seed most citrus before chopping. Slice kumquats very thin, without peeling; discard seeds.

In a medium bowl, mix together lime juice, olive oil, red and green onion, cilantro, red pepper flakes, white pepper and garlic salt. Add chopped citrus; toss gently.

Refrigerate for 1 hour or more to let flavors meld. It’s best served within one day.

Serve with chips, quesadillas, enchiladas, tacos, etc., or as an accompaniment to seafood, pork, chicken or steak.

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RECIPE

A recipe for preparing delicious meals from the bounty of the garden.

Keywords:

recipe recipes salsa citrus oranges limes kumquats mandarins grapefruit tangerines appetizer Sacramento gardening backyard orchard farmers markets produce management

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Garden checklist for week of Aug. 2

Get out early in the morning and monitor your garden’s moisture needs. Deep water and add temporary shade structures for plants that are feeling a little burned. In particular, protect developing peppers and eggplant.

* Put off fertilization until this heat passes; plants need to concentrate on hydration instead of growth.

* Harvest tomatoes, beans, squash, pepper and eggplants to prompt plants to keep producing. Give your plants a deep watering twice a week, more if planted in containers.

* Watch out for caterpillars and hornworms in the vegetable garden. They can strip a plant bare in one day. Pick them off plants by hand in early morning or late afternoon.

* Mulch can be your garden’s best friend – it conserves moisture while blocking out weeds. But don’t let mulch mound around stalks, stems or trunks. That can promote rot.

* Pinch off dead flowers from perennials and annuals to lengthen their summer bloom.

* Pick up after your fruit trees. Clean up debris and dropped fruit; this cuts down on insects and prevents the spread of brown rot.

* Prepare for a fall full of flowers by paying a little extra attention to your garden. Cut off spent blooms from roses, annuals and perennials. Roses will rebloom about six to eight weeks after deadheading.

* Indoors, start seedlings for fall vegetable planting, including bunching onion, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, radicchio and lettuce.

* Sow seeds of perennials in pots for fall planting including yarrow, coneflower and salvia.

* In the garden, direct seed beets, carrots, leaf lettuce and turnips. Make sure to keep seeds and seedlings consistently moist.

* Plant potatoes.

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