Smoked Chipotle Salsa

Double smoked chipotle peppers team up with cinnamon smoked pineapple, carrots, mini sweet peppers, and golden raisins in this unique smoked salsa recipe.

I referenced one of our favorite Little Rock restaurants as inspiration for our zucchini salsa, and this is another Local Lime inspired salsa. They serve a warm chipotle salsa that’s great with tortilla chips, but we’ve always wanted to use it as a sauce for other dishes.

So I decided to throw every ingredient listed on their menu on the Traeger for a couple hours before making a blended salsa that’s smoky, sweet, and spicy. This recipe makes a big batch of salsa that’s a great snack with chips or simmer sauce for ground beef or chicken quesadillas, tacos, and more.

Let’s take a look at how to make it, and I’ll leave you with a handful of ideas for putting this smoked chipotle salsa to work.

Ingredients for Chipotle Smoked Salsa

You’ll need carrots, mini sweet peppers or red bell peppers, half a pineapple, golden raisins, a can of chipotle peppers in adobo, and a couple of limes.

The chipotle peppers and raisins smoke together in a dish with a bit of water. You can get by without smoking these two, but I think this salsa is best served warm. So it’s nice to pull everything off the smoker to blend and serve straight away.

A common complaint you’ll see about smoked carrots recipes is how long they take to cook. In testing this salsa, I ran into the same issue. The solution is to wrap them in foil after they’ve picked up a nice amount of smoke.

In this case, you’ll wrap the carrots after 90 minutes at 300ºF and cook for an additional 30-45 minutes. Keep this method in mind the next time you’re making carrots on a smoker and they’re taking forever to get fork tender.

The variety of mini sweet peppers I used are seedless, but you’ll want to remove any seeds from bell peppers or other pepper varieties you use before blending.

Aside from that, everything can go straight from the grill to a food processor or blender with lime juice and a bit of water. The recipe gives a big range for water to account for your desired salsa consistency and ingredient differences. Just add slowly and don’t forget to salt to taste before serving.

You can also reduce the spice level of this salsa by adding more acidity (lime juice or vinegar) or sweetness (raisins, fresh pineapple, or sugar).

How to Serve

Like I mentioned in the intro, this smoked salsa works for more than just chips and salsa. The quesadillas pictured below, for example, are made with ground beef cooked with the chipotle salsa and a blend of Mexican cheeses.

You could cook any ground protein with the salsa to make a filling for baked taquitos, air fried quesadillas, enchilada casserole, or a topping for smoked nachos.

This chipotle salsa would also work great for a slow simmering sauce for dishes like pulled chicken or beef. Or if you’re in a hurry, you could toss the sauce with pulled rotisserie chicken to make rotisserie chicken tacos or enchiladas.

No matter how you serve this chipotle salsa, I’d love to hear about it in a comment or recipe review. Let me know if you have a recipe question in the comments as well. Happy smoking!