Home Canned Salsa

What you need:

Four (4) Five gallon buckets of fresh, homegrown tomatoes. (Buckets filled to about 3 inches from the top)

Two packages of mild canning salsa mix. Available in the canning section of most large supermarkets. (You can add another package or two if you wish)

Five ounces of Chili Powder.

Three ounces of Dried Garlic Powder.

Four pounds of large White Onions.

Twenty-five Jalapeno Peppers, mostly seeded.

Quarter pound of seeded Serrano Peppers--Optional

Add more peppers, such as Habanero, if you want a hot salsa.

This yields approximately 27 quarts of salsa. You may want to split the recipe in half unless you have two large soup pots.

To Prepare:

Wash, core and cut the tomatos into quarters or smaller.

Drain the 'maters. Use a hand blender to churn the tomatoes to the consistency of thick tomato sauce. Let sit a half hour or so and skim the excess liquid off the top. (This recipe is not for a chunky style salsa as some may not prefer a really chunky texture, but it IS thick)

Finely chop the peppers and onions---BE SURE TO USE GLOVES!!!

Sweat the peppers and onions.

After the peppers and onions have been duly sweated, add them, together with the salsa mix packs and spices, to the tomatoes. (At this point, you can add some salt to taste--couple of level tablespoons or so) Cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until mixture has reduced by about 20%. Turn off heat and ladle salsa into the quart jars. (Salsa should be as thick as the below photo.)

Now, if you Can on a regular basis you may want to use the canning directions in your Ball Blue Book of Preserving, which you can get at most Wal-Marts or online. Since the wife has been canning for years, and is responsible for the outstanding salsa in these photos, and knows a few tricks of the trade, instead of a hot water bath, she uses a pressure cooker. Put a couple of inches of water in the pressure cooker so that when the seven quarts are added, the water comes up to just below the shoulder of the jars. Cover the pressure cooker as you normally would, turn up the heat, and wait until steam steadily escapes from the top nozzle. Add the weight (10 psi notch) and cook for 10-12 minutes. Turn off pressure cooker and let sit 15-20 minutes or so. Remove weight and pressure cooker lid. If jars aren't properly sealed or in the process of their lids popping shut, take the jars out and turn them upside down on a towel for a couple of hours. If a few of the jars still aren't properly sealed, run them through the pressure cooker again or pop them in the fridge and eat the salsa within the next three or four days. (When you remove the jars from the pressure cooker, be sure to tighten the rings which you loosely, but somewhat tightly secured before you put the jars in the cooker.)

For best results, leave the salsa in the fridge overnight. If you follow this recipe, you will feel the heat on the aftertaste rather than upfront. For more heat add the Jalapeno seeds or more hot peppers. As with any recipe, you can modify this to suit your own personal taste.

If you have never canned and are a bit squeamish about using a pressure cooker, they are pretty safe, but most use a plastic plug in the lid as the overpressure relief mechanism. You do not want to be looking down at that plug when it pops. Otherwise, as long as you follow the canning directions, you should be fine. If you do want to start canning, be sure to get the best quality pressure cooker you can afford.

For the cost conscious.....if you are using jars and rings that you already have on hand and are using tomatoes that you grew from seed or got from a friendly farmer, then including the cost of the lid and the gas (I do not recommend using an electric cooktop for canning), you can make this salsa for less than fifty cents a quart.

Canning is time consuming, but fun and satisfying..........and it is something your kids will remember and appreciate for the rest of their lives. (And with the economy the way it is, it's a skill you may want to bone up on.)