Salsa for canning

I have been tweaking my recipe for canning every year I make it.  I am very happy with my batch this year.  I have about a third of my tomatoes are paste tomatoes and the rest are a variety of salad and slicing tomatoes.  I do not use cherry tomatoes even if there is a surplus as it is just too many seeds for my liking.  At any rate, here is my latest version of salsa for canning.

Salsa for canning

Ingredients:
Tomatoes, Peppers (Jalapeno and green), onions, garlic, cilantro, salt, pepper, vinegar, limes, and tomato paste.   For every 4 cups of tomatoes use one or two hot peppers depending on how hot they are (jalapenos do change with different weather conditions).  I will sometimes substitute half of my fresh hot peppers with my roasted and dehydrated jalapenos which is about 1 rounded tablespoon for every 2 peppers.  I use about one green pepper for every 8 cups of tomatoes.   One medium onion for every 4 cups tomatoes.   One clove of garlic for every 4 C tomatoes.   One or two sprigs of cilantro for same.   Cilantro usually ripens and seeds before the tomatoes are ready so I chop the leaves up and freeze it in bunches and chop off as I need it estimating for every 4 C of tomatoes.   Salt and pepper to taste.   I use tomato paste to thicken the salsa rather than cook it down.   It taste much better and the salsa doesn't get all mushy from so much cooking.   A splash of vinegar to add acid. Better yet, I zest and juice one lime for every 4-8 cups of tomatoes.   

Directions:
Peel tomatoes by immersing in hot water as you would to can them whole cutting out the core as well.   Dice tomatoes.   Seed and dice hot peppers.   Be sure to use rubber gloves during this process or your hands will be burning for days!   Little food processor works well for dicing all the ingredients other than tomatoes to make them finer.   Tomatoes you want to have chunkier than rest.

Heat the salsa before canning.   I use the pressure canner.   10 pounds of pressure for 25 minutes for pints (or half pints) or 30 min for quarts (which I don't usually do, too much for one use).  I also have started using a water bath when adding sufficient amounts of lime juice and vinegar which is 15 minutes for pints when it returns to a boil.  If your salsa gets too hot add canned tomatoes when you use it.   If it is too mild add hot sauce when you use it.

I was able to successfully can all my salsa outdoors this year.  I really like my new portable stove which is two heavy duty burners with wind shields and a wind apron around the top.  It hooks up to a 20 pound liquid propane tank.  The burners are so much bigger than my stove and heating up the outside air is so much better than my house.

I have also decided that when I cannot get to doing my tomato canning because time is shorter than tomatoes, I am cleaning, coring, and freezing them in gallon bags until I have the time to do my sauce.  I refer to this as deferred canning. I make my jam in the winter with this same method.

I hope you like making your own homemade salsa as much as I do.  I do large amounts as it is my winter time trading commodity.  I got raspberries, homemade maple syrup, and help with canning in exchange for jars of salsa.  The possibilities are endless.

Deferred canning

Cherry, raspberry, blackberry, and strawberry jam 4-14-13

Sometimes I do deferred canning.  Summer can be hot and miserable.  Fall can be filled with so many other things that need to be put up.  Fruits are so easy to clean up, freeze, and can in the winter when my schedule is less filled with other things to do.  Winter turned to spring this year before I finally pulled the fruits of summer out of the freezer to turn into homemade jams.

I purchase Door County pitted pie cherries from the local fruit market which are already frozen.  Sometimes they become pies, sometimes jam.  I had no jam on the shelves so it was time.  My raspberries and blackberries came through a barter with friends and family which involved the exchange of homemade salsa in return.  The strawberries were hulled and frozen whole for a later date of jam making.

It was cold and snowy this morning which prompted me to pull out the canning kettle and wash up the half-pint jars.  Once the mess is started, doing four batches is not much worse than doing one.  Another advantage to making the jam all at once.  Three or four hours later all was done and cooling on the racks.  It felt good.

As long as I was going through the freezer, it was also time to take in the frozen venison "scraps".  All together we weighed in 60 pounds of venison to have made into fresh and smoked sausages.  It will be a good summer of grilling.