Making and Canning Salsa

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Who doesn’t love homemade Salsa? We often have a pre dinner snack of salsa and tortilla chips, usually with a cold mug of home brewed beer. Here is an awesome Salsa recipe for you to try and I’ll show you how I go about making salsa. Awesome salsa!

Make a small batch to eat fresh or make a large enough batch to can some up to enjoy come Winter. The canning instructions are included below!

Making Salsa

Salsa can be safely canned in a water bath – I usually put mine up in half pint jars. Perfect size for us and if we have company to enjoy it with us, I just open up another jar.

And water bath canning is an GREAT way to start canning if you are a beginner. It’s easy, inexpensive and a good way to start building up your pantry.

Here’s the water bath canner set up that we use here and we get a LOT of use from it. Some years I put up hundreds of jars of vegetables and soups. Graham loves canning stews and fish, so he often adds hundreds more jars to our cold room. These need to be pressure canned, which is a bit different than water bath canning.

I’ve included some links to other canning articles here on the website – you’ll find them at the bottom of this post. Canning is a very worthwhile skill to learn – you can save so much money! Plus, you are serving your family healthy food.

Salsa Recipe:

Here’s the recipe – try a batch and let us know what you think!

Ingredients:

7 cups chopped tomatoes (about 6 lbs)

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped green bell pepper

8 jalapeno peppers

3 gloves minced garlic

1 can tomato paste

3/4 cup white vinegar

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/2 tsp ground cumin

Coarsely chop all the veggies (I actually dice them quite small.) Remove seeds from peppers (Hah! that’s no fun – we throw a bunch of seeds in the pot too.) Combine all ingredients in a large stainless steel saucepan.

Bring to a boil and boil gently, stirring occasionally, until it has the desired consistency. Ladle into clean sterilized jars and wipe the rim. Put on the seal and ring. Boil in a boiling water bath 20 minutes for pints (we do 25 minutes, because we are above 1000 ft elevation.)

This recipe makes 5 pint jars of salsa.

Remove from the canner and let jars sit for 24 hours. Don’t move them and keep the jars out of drafts. You can just put a towel over the jars if you need to.

Then, this winter, enjoy this salsa, I think you’ll like it! You may find yourself planning to make even more jars next year. If you are new to canning, you need to know which foods can be safely canned in a water bath canner and which foods need to be canned using a pressure canner.

Get a copy of the Ball Blue canning book – not only does it have all the information you need, but it has some great recipes as well! There is a difference between canning fruits, vegetables and meats – you need a good reference book, one that you can count on.

I am extremely careful when it comes to canning; some would call me anal about it, and that’s just fine with me. When I see all my canned jars on the shelf, I want to KNOW for sure that every one of them is safe to open and feed my family.

Canning Links:

Using a Pressure Canner – here’s what you need to know

Pressure Canning Beans – grow your own and then can them up!

Pressure Canning Salmon – and other fish

Our entire Country Living in a Cariboo Valley Recipe Collection can be found here

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