Husker Do's

• You'll need to remove both the papery husk and its interior residue before preparing tomatillos. Both come off without much effort, especially if you start under running water. Hold the tomatillo under the tap and slip the husk from the fruit. The sticky substance on the tomatillo skin rinses off quickly, so you won't need to scrub it. If you prefer to remove the husks at the counter, it's still important to rinse the husked fruits to rid the skins of their stickiness.

Skin is In

• Regular tomatoes are often stripped of their skin by blanching them in boiling water and peeled so that they can be cooked down into sauce. Unlike tomatoes, heat only tenderizes the tomatillo's thin skin, along with the interior flesh and seeds. Whether you boil tomatillos or prepare them on the grill or in the skillet, the skins stay on the fruit before they're chopped or quartered and added to the other ingredients.

Boiling Basics

• Boiling tomatillos in water is a first step in some cooked salsa recipes. After husking and rinsing the fruits, add them whole to a large saucepan of boiling water. Peppers and garlic can be added at the same time. These ingredients reach tenderness after about 10 minutes of boiling. After draining, they can then be added in a food processor with sauteed ingredients, as in cooked tomatillo-fruit salsa. After being roughly chopped in a food processor, the ingredients cook down further at a low simmer for about 45 minutes.

Super Sauce

• To make a sauce for layering in Mexican dishes such as enchiladas, start by boiling tomatillos in chicken stock or another complementary cooking liquid instead of water. In this case, use just enough cooking liquid to cover the tomatillos. As with water, you only need a 10-minute boil to bring the tomatillos to the desired tenderness. Don't drain the fruits after they boil. Instead, blend them with their cooking liquid in a food processor, after adding uncooked ingredients such as fresh herbs and green onions.