Delete the Nuts: Grilled Tomatillo Salsa

I celebrated a birthday this past week, and since I spent the whole day in the car on the way home from vacation, a home-cooked dinner of favorites just wasn't in the cards. For something quick and easy, but dairy and gluten-free, we went to Moe's for the first time ever. Everyone liked the food, and especially the many salsas!

So, when I contemplated what to do with the mountain of tomatillos and peppers our garden was producing, I decided to try replicating the smoky spiciness of Moe's.

The result may not have been just like theirs, but it was absolutely delicious!

Grilled Tomatillo Salsa
1/3 bag mesquite wood chips
6 cups tomatillos (hulled, and halve anything bigger than a ping-pong ball)
1/4 red onion (quarter through root end so the quarter you're grilling stays intact)
4-6 jalapeno peppers (or other favorite hot pepper)
2 + 2 cloves of garlic
1 bunch cilantro
2 cups fresh tomatoes
1 lime
2 teaspoons + 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon Frank's RedHot
Water
Olive Oil

We stopped at Home Depot and picked up a bag of mesquite wood chips. I dumped about 1/3 of the chips into a bowl and covered them with water.

After about an hour (ok, two... I got distracted), I dumped off the water and put about 3/4 of the wood chips into an aluminum foil packet, into which I poked holes to allow the smoke to escape.

I heated the grill and threw the packet of wood chips on there (medium high heat) while I prepped the vegetables.

The tomatillos were peeled, and I halved the larger ones, quartered the onion, halved and seeded the peppers, and peeled 2 cloves of garlic. Then I drizzled everything with some extra-virgin olive oil and sprinkled with 1/2 teaspoon of salt. I left a handful of tomatillos, 2 more cloves of garlic and all of the tomatoes out of the bowl for later.

Once the grill was heated, I realized I wasn't getting much steam/smoke out of the wood chip packet, so I cut a slit in the top and peeled back some of the foil, then I laid the veggies in a single layer on a grill pan, turned the heat to low, and closed the lid.

I let the vegetables get brown on one side (about 10 minutes), then I gave them a toss, moved the pan to the top rack and the smoke packet directly underneath, cranked the heat up a little and closed the lid again.

After another 15 minutes, everything was cooked down nicely. I removed the veggies from the grill and put them in a bowl in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. After they'd cooled down, and released a good bit of liquid, I drained everything and put it in the food processor. I had to process it in batches, and then mix it all together at the end. To the last batch, I added the remaining tomatillos and garlic, as well as the tomatoes, cilantro and juice of one lime.

Once it was all processed, I put it in a bowl and folded it together, adding in the last 2 teaspoons of salt, the cumin and Frank's Red Hot. Then we let it chill again for a bit while we put some ribs on the grill over the still-smoking packet of wood chips.