Jump to the Recipe
Ready for a salsa so smooth that it’s already cooling down the fire in your mouth before you even know it’s there?
This fresh mango dip covers all of the bases. The jalapeno adds a forceful kick while the sweet fruit refreshes and cools your mouth back down.
A little purple onion, tomato, cucumber, and cilantro round out the flavors and provide a beautiful array of colors. This dip is as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the taste buds!
Just make sure to start off with nicely ripened fruit, and this recipe will never fail you.
Serve it with chips like our spicy root vegetable chips, atop tacos, alongside fish, or even on its own. It’ll add a burst of flavor to whatever you pair it with.
Go ahead and eat the whole bowl in one sitting, if you please. I promise not to tell, so long as you don’t tell on me…
The Recipe
- 1 Mango peeled and diced
- 1/2 cup diced English cucumber,
- 1 large tomato diced
- 1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeno
- 1/3 cup diced red onion
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1/3 cup roughly chopped cilantro
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1 generous dash Freshly ground black pepper
- In a glass or ceramic dish, combine the mango, cucumber, tomato, jalapeno, and onion.
- Sprinkle the lime juice and olive oil over the top and stir, coating all of the ingredients well.
- Season with salt and pepper and give it a final stir.
- Cover and chill before serving.
Cooking by the Numbers…
Step One – Dice & Mix
Cut your mango, cucumber, tomato, jalapeno, and onion into small cubes and mix together in a medium-sized bowl. Add your chopped cilantro.
An easy way to peel and dice your mango is to first cut off large sections around the core. Then place the rim of a drinking glass between the skin and the flesh, and scoop the flesh away from the peel. It will slide off really easily without wasting a bite of that treasured fruit.
Once you’ve mixed your produce together, drizzle with lime juice and olive oil right away to prevent oxidization (the process that turns your beautiful fruits brown).
Step Two – Season
Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Do not underestimate the importance of this step! The right balance of salt and pepper can make or break any good dish.
Once you’ve got the right balance of seasoning, give it a final stir to make sure the ingredients are well mixed.
Step Three – Cover & Chill
Place the salsa in an air-tight container, or cover your glass dish with plastic wrap. Let it chill in the refrigerator until you are ready to serve. The longer it sits, the spicier and more flavorful it will become.
I shamelessly ate this salsa on its own as my entire lunch one day. Though my mouth sure burned, it was well worth it. Give it a try today.
For another tasty, tangy mango treat that’s more on the sweet side, try my recipe for Mango Tequila Sorbet.
What’s your favorite way to serve up this salsa? Let me know in the comments!
For more dip-worthy salsa recipes, try these next:
Photos by Kendall Vanderslice, © Ask the Experts, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. See our TOS for more details.
About Kendall Vanderslice
Kendall’s love of food has taken her around the world. From baking muffins on a ship in West Africa and milking cows with Tanzanian Maasai, to hunting down the finest apfelstrudel in Austria, she continually seeks to understand the global impact of food. Kendall holds a BA in Anthropology from Wheaton College and an MLA in Gastronomy from Boston University, and has worked in the pastry departments of many of Boston’s top kitchens. Based in Somerville, Massachusetts, Kendall helps to run a small community supported bread bakery and writes about the intersection of food, faith, and culture on her personal blog, A Vanderslice of the Sweet Life.
This is such a delightful and easy-to-make dip! I can imagine the different sorts of flavor fighting attention in your mouth. I love the combination of the sweet (mango) and the spicy (jalapeno) in my mouth, and just the hint of lime/lemon. Just lovely. I too can imagine eating these on its own or with a good grilled fish!
This looks so perfect, girl. Sometimes I get bored of common salsas just with onion, tomatoes, cilantro, jalapeños and chili powder, but I think that adding some mango to it can really add some extra freshness to the whole thing. I think that it will give me mango con chile frozen paletas vibes that I’m so fan about.
My mouth watered just by thinking about it, I really need to try it!
Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Ooo, mango con chile paletas sounds super great! Now you’ve got my mouth watering!
Well I have to say that the whole combination spicy and mango made my ears perk up a little bit, and I know that I will have to have this one hand for the end of summer. This might the last chance I get to get some good mangoes around here, so I should probably take advantage of that with this little recipe. Sounds like a real winner, and I am very interested to see how the spicy works with the mango. Thanks for sharing.
I have to admit that I have never tried this. I’ve heard of it frequently, and it even sounds good, but I’ve never jumped in and tried any of it.
I think this is the perfect opportunity though, since I could make the regular version and set a bit aside to try with the addition of fruit. It sure sounds simple enough, and it also sounds tasty.
To avoid wasting it if I didn’t end up liking it, I put off buying any. Making it though.. that could work. A little bit can’t hurt.
This recipe sounds great I will have to give it a go this weekend! I work in a restaurant that has pork belly tacos with mango habanero salsa topped off with a generous amount of queso fresco, it is a huge seller. Oddly enough being an eat meat eater I am not big on pork belly. I usually just fry up some fresh chips and eat the dip plain.
I like the tip for peeling the fruit and I will have to show my coworkers this, I think they will be pretty impressed.
Do you have any tips on picking a ripe mango? It seems that the restaurant the supplier we have always sends a batch that are too firm and lack any taste. I can’t really change that but I could use some help picking fresh product out at the farmers market or grocery store. Thanks in advance, cheers!
Ooh, I’ve gotta say I’m a sucker for a good piece of pork belly 😉
As far as choosing a ripe mango — the key is that it needs to be soft. If you cannot find any that are soft at the store, let them sit out at room temperature for a day or two and they will ripen a bit more. You can begin to smell the sweetness once they are ready. The color depends on the variety of mango, so relying on the softness and smell are your safest options.
Looks amazing!