We love salsa when we go out for Mexican food, but our homemade salsa gets used on a lot more than chips! After a recent trip to the Farmer’s Market in Dallas, we scored all we needed to make a batch!
Yes, that’s an entire flat of Roma tomatoes, and it doesn’t make as much salsa as one would think! This flat and the veggies to the left of it only made 12 pints of salsa, but it’s some good stuff.
We start out by peeling the skins off of the tomatoes, I missed getting a pic of this process since we were both busy dropping, chilling, and peeling. What am I talking about? Well, drop the tomatoes, a few at a time into boiling water, let them sit for a few seconds, pull them out and drop into an ice water bath to stop the cooking effect, and then peel the skin which has been loosened by the hot/cold baths. A small “x” cut into the bottom of the tomato will assist in the skin peeling.
After peeling, cut the top of the tomato off to remove the stem area. Place a few tomatoes into a food processor and pulse a few times until you get the chopped size you want in your tomatoes. Continue until all tomatoes are chopped.
Place the chopped tomatoes into a colander and allow them to drain a bit. If you want a salsa with a lot of liquid, skip this step. We like a thick salsa, so we drain ours overnight in the frig. Some say that the juice is pretty good to drink, I don’t like it so it goes down the drain.
Now the fun begins, chop, chop, chop! All of the ingredients are chopped up and then mixed together in in a very large pan. We chop all of the veggies with a knife and cutting board. Using the food processor chops them too fine for our taste.
Once mixed up, we slowly heat it to a simmer and allow it to cook for about 20 minutes.
Heat the salsa mixture at a simmer for 20 minutes.
While the salsa is simmering, we typically sterilize our jars, lids, and rings in boiling water. This step is very important to make sure you don’t have any uninvited critters growing in your jar of salsa!
The jars are boiled for 15 minutes to sterilize, the lids and rings are dropped in for just a minute or 2, much longer and damage to the seal can occur.
Now that the jars, lids, and rings are sanitized, it’s time to fill em up! Oh, by the way, the funnel, spoon, and tongs were sterilized as well in the boiling water.
Once your jars are filled, place the caps on top and then gently screw down the ring. The ring doesn’t need to be tight at this point, just snug for now.
Now it’s time to put the filled and capped jars back into the boiling water. This water bath will last for another 15 minutes. This time we are looking to heat the contents of the jar up enough to take out any of the remaining critters that may be in there. It also assists in placing a vacuum inside of the jar to seal it for long term storage.
Ok, here’s the hard part, after taking them from the water bath, just let them sit and cool off. If this is your first time canning, don’t freak out when you hear a POP come from the kitchen after the jars begin to cool. That’s the vacuum inside of the jar pulling the lid down into a full seal. I though my jars were cracking my first time!
Better than Pace by a long shot!
Now, you see that pretty little plaid ring? That’s the one the bride and I use for our sample jar! Seldom do all jars get perfectly filled, so we add this ring to the jar with the least amount to sample out of ASAP!
Want to make your own batch? The recipe below will get you started, just follow the process above and get busy!
8-cups of chopped tomatoes
2-large onions chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic minced
1/2-cup of jalapeños chopped (remove some or all seeds if you want milder salsa)
However much cilantro you want (optional)
Salt to taste
Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!
until next time, Bone Appetite!
cranky buzzard 