What began as a dream to revive his parents’ business became a story of Mexican heritage, a mother’s acceptance and finding the confidence to move forward.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Good salsa starts with fresh tomatoes, cilantro, lime and just the right amount of heat.

For Ed Carrillo, owner of Salsa Sazona, the most important ingredient isn’t something you’ll find on the label. It’s his family history.

His parents immigrated from Mexico to California and eventually owned their own salsa company.

“My sister and I had been surrounded with salsa all of our lives almost since that moment. And so we grew up helping my parents a lot make salsa. So we’d go out to the kitchen, help them out, help them go deliver to get different grocery stores out in the area,” Carrillo said.

Years later, that family business was gone. But the dream of bringing it back never left Carrillo.

“After I graduated college and kind of gotten into my professional life. I still kind of have that dream to bring my salsa company or my parents’ salsa company back to life,” he said.

His mother was surprised when he told her he wanted to make salsa again.

“She’s said, ‘really, Ed, you want to make salsa again,’ a couple of times, but,  joking aside, she’s really proud of the work that we’ve done,” Carrillo said.

“And it also just shows that um we’re committed to something that like is part of our family heritage,” he said.

There was just one problem: His mother, never wrote the recipes down.

“My mom, probably like many Latina moms, didn’t write any recipes down. So, we didn’t have any recipes at all from her last company,” Carrillo said.

So Carrillo experimented and relied on plenty of taste testing.

Recreating the recipes became a personal experience for Carrillo, especially as he worked alongside his mother in her home kitchen.

“It was a very personal experience just like getting to share that moment with my mom specifically being in her home kitchen and just like creating those recipes again because again that was part of our childhood so it’s kind of a full circle moment for me,” he said.

Now, Carrillo is serving those flavors one handmade batch at a time.

He makes chipotle salsa, a hot salsa sold at the Midtown Farmers Market, or at grocery stores. He also makes mango salsa and a seasonal cilantro lime marinade, or marinara verde.

The salsa lasts about three to four weeks on the shelf because Carrillo said he doesn’t use preservatives.

But reviving the family business wasn’t only about recreating the past. It was also about making room for the person Carrillo had become.

“Coming out as queer is really hard for my mom to understand, I think, because there’s also an idea of machismo within Mexico,” he said.

Carrillo said his mother worked to understand and ultimately embrace him.

“She’s really embraced that, which I really really love about her. I know that that’s not the case for a lot of families. So, I do thank her a lot for that because it has given me, kind of the confidence to do things that I wouldn’t normally do, because I know I have my mom’s support,” he said.

That confidence is reflected in the name he chose for the business: Salsa Sazona.

“Sazonar” means to season or flavor something in Spanish, Carrillo said, and he wanted that idea to come through in the salsas.

The tagline is “Sazonada sin miedo,” or “seasoned or flavored without fear.”

That message now carries into the kitchen with Carrillo’s partner, Colton. Together, they make and package every batch by hand.

“This is actually how my parents used to package every single one of their salsas too,” Carrillo said.

The process connects his parents’ work with a new generation and gives Carrillo a way to preserve more than recipes.

“Even if I end up closing my doors for my business tomorrow, I’ll still have the gift of knowing how to make salsa, and that in itself is really nice because it keeps me in touch with my roots, and it’s something that I can pass down within my family. If I have kids one day, I’ll pass down those recipes to them,” he said.

“And I think that’s the beautiful thing about food, specifically, is that you can pass those things down. And we can just hold on to those things then, that’s kind of what keeps us grounded within a culture,” Carrillo said.

Salsa Sazone is available at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, Compton’s Market, and the Midtown Farmers’ Market.

Watch more from ABC10: From Farmers Markets to Michelin Recognition: The Story Behind Nixtaco | Hispanic Heritage Month

ABC10: Watch, Download, Read






































1
/
12