One of the joys of fall for me is making fresh home made salsa. It’s a lot of work but well worth it. My wife picked up a bunch of canning supplies two years ago and last year we actually produced some real food. Now I look forward to it every year. This year we made 33 pint jars of salsa and is it yummy.
Recipe:
* 7 cups of tomato (4 cups diced, 3 cups blended)
* 3 cups sweet onion (2 diced, 1 blended)
* 2 cups bell peppers (diced)
* 4 Tbs chopped garlic (blended)
* 1/4 Apple Cider Vinegar
* 2 Tbs Lemon or Lime Juice
* 2 Tbs Dark Brown Sugar
* 1/4 Cup Cilantro
* 1 Tbs chopped Jalepeno
* 1 Tsp Cheyenne Pepper
* 2 Tbs Blackstrap Molasses
* Herbs: Taragon, Sage, Cumin, Celery Salt
* Salt and Sugar to taste
* wheat flour
Start out by prepping your main ingredients. For the tomatoes it’s best to use the paste variety such Roma. I tend to hand dice the tomatoes. While I’ve tried using a Oxo Chopper (slap chop knock off), Le Presse and food processor the result just always seems to not be chunky enough for the consistency that we like. I use a blender to turn a little less than half of the tomatoes to liquid. If you do turn fresh tomatoes into liquid you’ll notice the result is a nice pink and not the dark red your used to with canned tomato products. I don’t know why but this seems to be important. This last time around I used the chopper to chop up the onion and found it did a really nice job. The blended onion is just fresh onion put in the blender and liquidated. The peppers I run through a small food processor to make minced bell peppers. A good variety of colors makes for better presentation and taste. With the Garlic I’ve done both fresh heads and prepackaged. What I’ve found is that the spice world chopped jar garlic is both easy and has a great taste (http://www.spiceworldinc.com/body_product_jar.htm). When chopping the Jalapeno’s you should use kitchen gloves to protect yourself. Be very careful of what you touch while working with the Jalapeno’s as getting them on your skin can be rather painful. I don’t use the seeds at all as they add a heat both my wife and I don’t enjoy.
Now that you’ve got all your ingredients chopped and blended put the correct proportions into the sauce pan and bring to a boil. With the herbs I tend to shake them in instead of measuring. Because the herbs and the aroma and smell you should smell each and get a feeling for how they are going to affect the body of the finished salsa. If you need clear instructions and this notion of smell/feeling doesn’t make sense use five strong shakes of each from the shaker and you should be good. Once the mixture hits a boil for about two minutes lower the temp about half, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Now here is the tricky part, add a teaspoon of salt and sugar to the mixture, stir and let sit for two minutes. Give it a good stir and ladle some out into a little cup to taste. You just have to gauge if it needs more salt or more sugar. Your goal here is just to get it reasonably close because the final product once it’s canned and chilled will taste somewhat different than the boiling liquid so let go of your perfectionist and be happy with “hey that’s pretty good”. Now break out your bag of fine ground wheat flower and add it a very little bit at a time. My wife has asked me several times to measure out how much flower I use but I just can’t bring myself to do it. If I had to guess I probably add about a 4 tablespoons on the first go. The trick is to stir it in little by little while you try to avoid clumps. Then simmer the mixture stirring every couple of minutes for ten minutes. At this point I put a little in a little cup and put it in the freezer until it cools (so another 10 minutes) while that on the stove continues to simmer at very low heat. Once it cools down to the warm state it’s obvious if it’s to thin or needs something, generally though it’s just right and we are ready for the canning stage.
In canning we prefer the wide mouth pint mason jars but you can really use any jars you want. One batch makes about 5 pint jars. Just pour the hot liquid in the jar up to the bottom lip (1/4″ from the top) and put the lid on snug but not tight. Using a funnel is important as you don’t want to get salsa on the lip at all. Once you’ve got all of your jars poured and lidded start your pressure caner and load it up. The reason to use a pressure canning method instead of boiling water method is that this recipe is both low acid and uses a thickener which in both instances mandate pressure canning. I’m not going to explain pressure canning on this but to say that it is needed. Once pressure canned your jars of salsa will last up to a couple of years (some say longer). I’m not sure as we almost always go through all of our salsa in a year with giving them to friends and eating it.
