I just had the best homemade jarred salsa and chips for breakfast. The plan was to add the salsa to a glass of tomato juice, blend it up, pour it over ice and enjoy on the go – a Bloody Mary of sorts, sans the vodka. However, the tortilla chips have an amazing magnetic attraction and just drew me right into the bag, and before I realized it, I had finished half the bag with salsa for breakfast. After some consideration, not a bad breakfast!!! After all, I had lots of veggies: tomatoes, corn(tortillas) onions, peppers, and herbs. Maybe salsa for breakfast isn’t your thing. If not enjoy it with chips or on green beans Southwest style.
How to Blanch and Peel Tomatoes
Equipment
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- large kettle
- slotted spoon
Ingredients
- 4 lbs Ripe Tomatoes
Instructions
- Fill large kettle 1/2 full of water and bring to a boil.
- Carefully add the washed fresh tomatoes to the boiling water using a slotted spoon to avoid splashing.
- In about 20 seconds you will see the skin on the tomatoes start to split. Once the skin on the tomato splits, remove the tomato from the boiling water with a slotted spoon.
- Put the tomato in cold water to stop the cooking process.
- If a tomatoe's skin didn't split within 2 minutes after placing it in the boiling water, remove it anyway and put it in the cold water.
- The skins will slip off easily.
Once peeled cut them in half and remove the seeds by running your finger through the sections of seeds within the tomatoes. Dice the tomatoes and drain the excess juice. Combine tomatoes and the rest of the ingredients in a large kettle.
Cook over medium heat until the temperature is 180 degrees. Simmer keeping the salsa over 180 degrees for 30 minutes. Keeping the salsa temperature above 180 degrees for 30 minutes inactivates the enzymes and kills any bacteria.
While the salsa is cooking sterilize the jars and lids by running them through the sanitize cycle on the dishwasher.
Carefully fill the jars using a canning funnel. Leave 1-inch of space between the salsa and the top of the jar. Put the lids and rings on and tighten.
Process the homemade jarred salsa for 20 minutes in a water bath canner. To process, cover the jars with about 1 inch of water and start the timer when the water begins to boil. Keep the water boiling for the whole 10 minutes. Remove the jars at the end of the 10 minutes and place on a kitchen towel to cool and dry.
Once the jars are cooled, check to make sure they sealed by pressing down in the middle of the lid. If the lid pops down and then springs back up, the jar did not seal. Use this salsa within one week. The sealed jars are good for 18 months.
Bonus Section: Make Your Own Water Bath Canner!!! A water bath canner is nothing more than a canning jar rack on the bottom of a large kettle. The high temperature of a burner can break the glass canning jars if they are sitting on the bottom of the canning kettle.
Take some aluminum foil, (a 1 ft square piece) and wad it up into a disc. Press the canning jar into the disc until the jar imprints into the foil.
Place the foil discs on the bottom of the kettle and place the filled jar over the foil. Press down on the jar to level it on the foil. Fill the kettle until the water is about one inch over the top of the jars. Process the jars according to recipe instructions.
If you have only two or three jars to process and don’t want to use the large canner, this method is perfect.
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Best Homemade Jarred Salsa
Equipment
- This page contains Amazon affiliate links. If you click a link, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you
- 8 pint jars with rings and new lids or 14 half-pint jars with rings and lids
Ingredients
- 12 cups diced tomatoes You will need 8 - 10 lbs of whole tomatoes. Peel them and remove the seeds first.
- 1⅓ cup bell peppers green or red diced
- 3 jalapenos diced with seeds and membranes removed
- 3 cups onions diced
- 1 cup cilantro chopped fresh
- ¾ cup lime juice
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp chilli powder
- 1 Tbsp salt pickling or kosher
- ¼ cup garlic minced
Instructions
- To change the number of serving: hover over the number of servings, a slider will pop up. The slider can be adjusted up or down. This will automatically recalculate and adjust the amount of each ingredient for you.
- Sterilize the pint-size jars, rings, and lids in the dishwasher on the sanitize cycle.
- Add all the ingredients to a large kettle and stir to combine.
- Cook on medium, stirring frequently until simmering and temperature reached 180 degrees.
- Keep temperature above 180° for 30 minutes
- Immediately fill the hot sterile jars with the cooked salsa, clean any spills off the rim of the jar, put the lid and ring on the jar and tighten.
- Process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes
- Remove jars from the boiling water with the jar lifter. Let cool and check to make sure they are sealed by pressing down in the center of the jar. If the lid pops down and back up it is not sealed and will need to be refrigerated and eaten.
Thank you for not writing an entire novel about the recipe. This salsa rocks.
lol you are welcome.