Sunday, August 18, 2013

Canning Salsa

before
after
Today, I made 24 pints of Salsa #5 from 2 pecks of tomatoes.  This salsa recipe is the best home canned salsa recipe ever!  Everyone loves it - I tinkered with a Ball recipe after reading lots of online recipes that included canned tomato sauce and paste.  Unless you know really know what you are doing, it's not safe to tinker with canning recipes ever, especially salsa ones. I started with a canning safe recipe and tweaked the seasonings to get this one tuned in.   It really does make a great salsa This year, I used the food processor for the hot peppers and onions.   Also, I found out that I didn't need to cut an x in the bottom of each tomato before peeling them by dipping them in hot water.  I didn't can the peaches yet, I will do it tomorrow.  Peaches need to be perfectly ripe or it is hard to get their skins off, plus I am totally tired.   It took me 4.5 hours to can this salsa; I got the tomatoes this year from Goetz Farm at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market because my farmer friend Ann's tomato crop didn't do well this year.   My own tomatoes have a horrible fungus, too.  The pickles were some additional that I made with my friend Ellen earlier this week,  9 more half pints to add to my larder in addition to the ones I made a few weeks ago.  They are my version of a famous local pickle called McClures.   I have never been able to make enough salsa or pickles for my family - this year, we ran out of salsa in January.   

2 comments:

Vivienne said...

"Horrible fungus" - did you get weird bumpy lesions on the stem end of the fruit? We had late blight of tomato in the area again. I took out all my tomatoes early because I didn't want to keep it around (but still got a decent crop)

Cynthia said...

nope. - what I got was brown spots on the leaves early, and then the leaved died. I dumped all my dirt and will sterilize my planters before replanting next year.