Salsa

Salsa is any of a variety of sauces used as condiments for tacos and other Mexican and Mexican-American foods and as dips for tortilla chips, served raw or cooked and generally at room temperature; although the Spanish word salsa means any sauce, in English it refers specifically to Mexican table sauces such as the chunky tomato-and-chili pico de gallo and salsa verde. Chips with salsa are a ubiquitous appetizer in Mexican-American restaurants in the United States but not typically in Mexico itself, and in 1992 the dollar value of salsa sales in the United States surpassed that of tomato ketchup. The food writer Diana Kennedy described a dish of sauce or relish as being as indispensable to the Mexican table as salt, pepper and mustard are elsewhere.