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cooking Salsa Help About Cooking It

Wanted to make a salsa but had a question. How long should I cook it for on the stove to make it safe to store for a bit? At what temp?
 
For my cooked salsas, I usually prep all the stuff I'm going to be making separately.
I have a big honkin pot of tomatoes on a low heat. Peeled and quartered. I usually go with around 60 to 70 tomatoes, depending on how well my garden is doing.
In separate pans I soften up my green bell peppers in some olive oil, then add them to the big tomato pot. Then the same with my onions. Then the same with about 3/4ths of the peppers I'm going to use, saving the rest for adding just before I'm ready to can.

Once all the other stuff is in my big pot, I cook on a low/medium heat for 1 hour, stirring the pot every 10 minutes or so to keep it from burning to the bottom from all the sugars in the tomatoes.

After that I can per directions.

All told, my salsa cooks for a little over an hour and a half on low and low/medium heat, but that's for a huge quantity (I can usually get 20 quarts of salsa out of this)
 
Iggy...IMO, cooking the salsa is a must do but even more of a must do is the canning part...using a boiling water bath for your jars, keeping your lids warm in a separate sauce pan but not boiling them, and a pressure cooker to can them in....after taking out of the pressure cooker and letting sit...if the lids are not "sucked down" they will not last...and any time you look at the finished product and the top is not still "sucked down" it is spoiled or spoiling...
 
I use water bath canning for my salsa the difference being if it's not pressure canned you have to increase the acidity as tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc are not as acidic as they once were. Here is a copied recipe I used for my last salsa...the increase of vinegar to 1 cup sounds like a lot. I used half vinegar/half lemon juice, it doesn't have a vinegar taste.



Posted by readinglady z8 OR (My Page) on Wed, Aug 9, 06 at 20:39

Annie's at Canning Camp right now, but here's her recipe with her comments. Note her comment there are two amounts of vinegar, depending upon whether you water bath or pressure can.
"Sure I do, here's mine. Please note that it is pressure canned, because I cut the acid ingredients down by half. The original directions were to use 2/3 cup of vinegar and waterbath, but I wanted less of the acidic flavor and so cut the vinegar in half and process according to the Blue Book instructions for non-acidic vegetables. If you want to waterbath it, add that extra vinegar. If you want it mild, use the smaller amount of jalapenos.

ANNIE’S SALSA
8 cups tomatoes, peeled, chopped and drained
2 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 cups chopped green pepper
3 – 5 chopped jalapenos
6 cloves minced garlic
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp pepper
1/8 cup canning salt
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar (for BWB or 1/3 cup vinegar for PC)
16 oz. tomato sauce
16 oz tomato paste
Mix all ingredients, bring to a boil, boil 10 minutes. Pour into hot jars, process at 10 lbs of pressure for 30 minutes for pints. Or BWB 15 minutes.
Makes 6 pints

Note: If you do not want tomato sauce and paste in this leave it out. Many have commented that they did not use it. I am going to use this recipe for a yellow salsa using white tomatoes, jamaican yellows, aji limon, aji cito, yellow thais and any other yellow pepper I have like banana or hot wax. It should be tasty and pretty too.
 
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