Salsa Canning Mania!

I have been canning homemade salsa every summer with fresh tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro from our gardens since 1994.  But as a result, I've also created somewhat of a monster situation in my family . . . meeting the demand by family members for this salsa!  Bill and I usually can three times per summer, at 20 pints per large batch.  Whenever we return to the Midwest for our annual summer visits we had better include a bushel of S.C. peaches and a box of canned salsa or we're read the Italian riot act of disappointment by the family!

Canning salsa is an event, baby!  I mean if you haven't canned yet, just let me warn you, it's time-consuming, steamy-hot, and often back-breaking work . . . but oh so worth it in terms of the rewarding pleasure given in return.  Plus you know that you are continuing on an age-old tradition of food preservation!  My husband and I can together (isn't that romantic?) . . . it's a bonding thing!  And yesterday we just finished a second batch of our family's favorite salsa.  Because it really requires a lot of time and energy, we decided that two large batches was enough for this summer since Bill is returning to teaching classes for fall semester this week and my back isn't ready yet to handle this arduous job without him.

For those of you who have been reading my blog since 2008, you may have noticed that I never prepare Mexican food . . . simply because we'd rather go to our favorite Mexican eatery in town to enjoy it where they do such a superb job of preparing the food.  I don't even bother to try and replicate Mexican cuisine at home.  Canning salsa, on the other hand, is the one and only exception.

this is about 1/3rd of the jars that we canned; the other jars were already in the pantry and we were too tired to pull them back out again just for a photo!

Since we started canning salsa, we've never purchased another commercially produced jar of salsa EVER!  The flavor of super fresh summer tomatoes simply cannot be topped!  Plus it's really healthy!  As far as a recipe, we don't have one, cooking by instinct the way that my mother taught me.  But we include the typical basics that everyone loves in salsa:  garden-fresh tomatoes (and we use all varieties for a more complex flavor), green peppers, onions, jalapeño peppers, and little personal twists here and there.  We also make a variety of different spiced versions depending on the type of chili peppers used:  serranos, jalapeños, chipotles, etc.  The final acceptability of flavor is simply achieved by tasting, tasting, tasting until it is just right!  Some of my family prefers this salsa as plain and simple as possible, others like it spiced up, and others like it as hot as the sun itself.

Another thing about our salsa, we don't use a food processor as some people do to save time.  We like ours 'salsa crude' or chunky.  This means that you need to set aside a nice amount of time to sit and chop all the ingredients.  Honestly, this is one of my favorite things involved in cooking.  I just love the process of being with the ingredients, smelling, touching, and tasting as I go.  Even the chopping sound on the cutting boards is like a welcome song to me.

Sort of a zen-state in cooking! :-D

we like our salsa on the thicker side, so this requires a good hour of simmering on the stove.  you can see how chunky we also make our salsa.

when cooking large batches of anything, we make quite a mess on the stove!

Here is a link for a good tutorial on canning salsa if you need one:  canning salsa instructions.  We can numerous sizes since we give so many jars away as gifts.  We've started to use more 1/2 pint jars simply because we give so much of this salsa away and it's getting pretty expensive.  The pint size jar is our most popular requested size.  The larger quart sizes, although used the least, are great to use to serve at parties and get-togethers such as this summer's family reunion.  When people stop by with unexpected goodies, we always have a jar of salsa on hand to give to friends in return.  I mail tons of this stuff to my sister in Iowa, our son in Chicago, and our daughter and hubby in Tennessee.

It's just darn good stuff with absolutely no preservatives, completely organically grown in our garden (that's right, no spraying any stuff on our garden allowed!).  Our veggies are also watered completely with natural well water.  I'm not sure what the caloric content is, but since it's all veggies, it can't be that high!

And now that I've made myself completely hungry, I think I'll go have some chips and salsa!


Mangia!


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