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Have you ever tried a kumquat? They’re these little citrus fruits, like miniature oranges, not much bigger than a grape, that you can eat whole, even the seeds.
You can slice them and add them to salads, or just pop them into your mouth for a quick snack.
A friend stopped by the other day with a container filled with kumquats (don’t you love friends who bring you food?) and a mission to make salsa.
What follows is the citrus-y salsa we made with the kumquats, which I’ve been eating up with fish and in steak tacos.
You could easily add some chopped mango or avocado to the salsa, and chop it up more finely if you wanted to use it as a dip for tortilla chips.
Kumquat Salsa Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 cups chopped cleaned and thinly sliced kumquats
- 1/2 cup chopped red onion
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- Dash of cayenne pepper
- Pinch of kosher salt
Method
Combine all ingredients. Add more or less red pepper and cayenne to desired heat. Let sit for 1 hour for the flavors to more fully blend.
Great served with steak or seafood such as halibut, black sea bass, or salmon.
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
Kumquat Salsa
Why is Kosher salt so important?
Recipes mention the type of salt because it makes a big difference in the saltiness of the end dish. Kosher salt has less density per volume than table salt, for instance, so you can use a teaspoon of each and the salsa made with Kosher salt will be less salty, because you added fewer grams of salt. Does that make sense? Not all recipes mention the type of salt, because back in the day it was assumed everyone used table salt. But now there are multiple brands of kosher salt, plus coarse sea salt and fine sea salt, etc. It’s just salt, but it can make a big difference.
I’m thinking about making this for my foods class since I was assigned kumquats, do you think it would be as flavorful if I blended it all together?
No, not really. Better to keep it chunky.
I recently did this again for a potluck. Due to the fact I was in a rush I just tossed the kumquats into a food processor after cutting them in half and plucking out any easy-to-get-to seeds. Chopped up some cilantro, and some green onion instead of red. A more slammed together version that I think lends itself more to chips. The more pico de gallo large chunks version in the picture is definetly more effective in tacos and on fish.
Thanks for the link, Elise. I’m addicted to those little fruits with the big taste! I even wrote an NPR Kitchen Window piece on them last month. One of our local farmers has been growing Meiwa kumquats which are rounder, plumper, juicier, and sweeter than Nagami kumquats. If you can get your hands on them, grab them and don’t let go! They’re amazing!
We had some kumquats and limequats that we picked up at a local fruit stand. We put this in some homemade tacos with carne asada and corn torillas. It was out of this world, the fruit really gave it a nice citrus kick that was to die for.