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Heat a broiler, adjust the rack as high as it will go, and spread the tomatoes, garlic, chiles and onion onto a rimmed baking sheet.
Roast everything until the tomatoes are softening, blackened and blistered on one side, usually about 6 minutes, then turn everything and roast the other side.
When cooled, roughly chop the chiles (no need to remove the seeds), slip off and discard the papery skin of the garlic and peel off most of the skin from the tomatoes, if you’d like.
In the classic, 3-cup-capacity lava-rock mortar (molcajete), add the garlic and chiles and sprinkle them with salt. Crush these to a paste.
Then, one by one, add the tomatoes and crush them to a coarse puree, adding any juices from the baking sheet.
Scrape the salsa into a bowl, then chop the roasted onion into small pieces and stir them in.
You may need to stir in about ¼ cup water to give it an easily spoonable consistency.
Last, taste the salsa and season it with salt (usually about ¾ teaspoon).
For canned fire-roasted tomatoes, follow all the same steps–broiler-roasting garlic, chiles, onions–but instead of roasted and peeled fresh tomatoes, use one 15-ounce can diced fire-roasted tomatoes with its juice.