Homemade Canned Salsa Recipe

Yesterday I stopped by my favorite farmer's market Oak Grove Farms. If you haven't been, it is located off Williams Grove Road in Mechanicsburg. They have amazing produce: All locally grown and incredibly fresh. Their prices aren't much higher than the regular grocery store and you can't beat the taste!

At this time of year they always have boxes of "seconds": Fruits and veggies that need to be used up in short order before they go bad. I always get tomatoes there for canning. Yesterday I got a big box of tomatoes and peppers for only $8.50!

 

I loved the mix of tomatoes and peppers.  So many flavors! (I still have 1/4 box of roma tomatoes and a gallon bag of peppers, even after making all this salsa)!

Here's the recipe:

Tomatoes- 20 cups peeled, cored, chopped tomatoes, which takes about about 8 lbs (yes, quite a few - you remove the skins, seeds and a lot of the water, so it takes a lot to start.)

6 cups seeded, chopped chile peppers (about 2 lbs worth - less if you want a milder salsa)

1/2 cup seeded, chopped jalapeno peppers

5 cups chopped red onions (I used 4: didn't really measure them)

1 head of garlic, finely chopped

1.5 cups cider vinegar or lemon juice

1 tablespoon oregano leaves

1/2 cup fresh cilantro*

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 t chili powder

1 18 oz can of tomato paste

Remove tomatoe skins by dropping cored tomatoes into boiling water. Let them in the water for 3-4 minutes then scoop out and drop into ice water. This process allows you to remove the skins quickly and easily.

Once the tomatoes are skinned, squeeze out the seeds and liquidy insides.  Because I wanted to can this salsa, this step is important. If you don't remove the liquid, the end result of the salsa will be really watery. Chop up the tomatoes and dump into a big enamel pot, turned on medium heat.

I then chopped up the peppers, onion, garlic, and cilantro in the food processer, which I added to the tomatoes. Add the spices as well. By this time, the mixture was starting to heat up and there was some liqued in the bottom of the pot. I scooped out about a cup or so and put in the food processor along with the tomatoe past. I whipped this up (just so it would be well blended) and put back into the tomato mixture.

I add the tomato paste because it helps make the salsa thicker. When you heat the salsa during the canning process, it draws the water out of the tomatoes. Eventhough you think you got alot of water out of the tomatoes, they still have a high water content.

I let this mixture cook on the stove for about 10 minutes. You don't need to cook this all that long as the canning process will do that for you.  (Once I got all the ingredients into the salsa pot, I filled up my canning pot and set the water to boil. While that was happening, I filled my clean, sanitized jars with the salsa mixture). This recipe made 12 pint jars of salsa.

Put the filled jars into the boiling water and cook for 20 minutes. Remove the sealed jars and allow to cool on the counter. Viola! Enough salsa to last through the spring!

If you want information on canning, Pick Your Own is one of my favorite sites. They have recipes and canning details, as well as links to local places where you can pick your own produce.