Sometimes, during the summer, our tomato plants decide to have a party on the vine, so to speak, and produce way more tomatoes than we can possibly eat, even if we are eating them every day, sliced, salted, and served with a little balsamic or mayo.
What do you do with your excess garden tomatoes?
Tomato juice or gazpacho are both great ways to use up lots of tomatoes. Or, if you like salsa, you’ll love this salsa recipe for canning. Canning salsa is the perfect solution for all those tomatoes. Pull it out in the middle of winter and munch with some tortilla chips (if the jars last that long, we go through salsa pretty quickly around here.)
This salsa recipe for canning uses specific amounts of ingredients, balancing the non-acidic ingredients with the amount of added acid needed to make the recipe safe. This canning salsa uses the following basic ingredients for one batch:
- 5 pounds of tomatoes
- 1 pound of Anaheim green chiles
- 3 jalapeños
- 1.5 onions
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup cilantro
- Seasoned with dried oregano, cumin, and salt and sugar
- Problem: Acidity – The trick to canning shelf-stable foods is the acidity. If you have the right amount of acidity, it creates an unpleasant environment for bacteria to grow. When canning low acid foods such as green chiles using a simple water bath process, you need to add vinegar to the mixture for safety.
- Solution: Vinegar – It is the vinegar in the salsa ingredients that make this salsa safe for canning using a water bath canning method. Tomatoes are already slightly acidic, and only need a little more acid to be safely canned using this method. But the chiles are not acidic, so they need more vinegar.
- Note: If you pressure-can, you don’t need to add as much vinegar. And if you plan on eating the salsa right away, or freezing it, acidity won’t be an issue.
To balance the taste of the vinegar in the canning salsa, we add some sugar to the mix. This combo also intensifies the flavor of the salsa.
