Salsa Oh Salsa

 

 

 

I am sharing the worlds greatest salsa recipe with you today. Seriously, it is so perfect I will never share another salsa recipe again. Except the peach salsa. And the Mango. And the chipotle… but well… for a regular salsa, this is the best! I can’t take credit for it. If you have been in the canning world for long you likely know about Gardenweb’s harvest page. They have amazing recipes and support there. An amazing epic hero of mine Annie created this recipe and fought to get this recipe tested and approved through her local extension. I heart Annie. I know of zero other facts about her other then she made my world wonderful. I have been making this salsa several years and have not found anything that is remotely near as wonderful.

First important fact. There are very little changes that can be made to this and still have a tested approved recipe. I will list the options at the bottom.

Second important fact. Buy extra jars. Prepare for people to think you are a culinary genius and ask for more.

Third important fact. I don’t know. I was going for something and lost it. It’s 5 am and the baby has me up. Forgive me.

 

First, gather your tomatoes, cilantro, peppers and other ingredients. This takes quite a bit of chopping. I have made it in the food processor before, but I prefer the small diced chunks more then the tiny particles from the food processor. To easily peel your tomatoes, drop into a pot of boiling water for 1 minute, the skins will start to split. Drop your tomatoes into cold water (we fill the kitchen sink with cold water and works great) The skins will peel off. This recipe calls for 8 cups of chopped tomato. You can use any tomato you like, I do a mixture of slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes because I like the consistency.

 

 

Next, combine all the ingredients into a large pot. In this particular instance I tripled the batch and placed in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil for ten minutes.

Deliciousness in a pot. Yes.

When this has boiled for ten minutes, you place into pints or half pints, with 1/2 inch head space. wipe rims, cap and process in a BWB for 15 minutes. There is no safe time set for quarts so stick with your pints.

When they have cooled. You will have beauty like no other.

 

Amazing Annie’s Salsa

8 cups chopped peeled tomatoes

2 1/2 cup chopped onion

1 1/2 cup chopped green/yellow/red pepper

3-5 jalapenos

6 cloves garlic

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp pepper

1/8 cup salt

1/4 cup cilantro

1/3 cup sugar

1 cup total bottled lime juice, bottled lemon juice or apple cider vinegar

16 ounce tomato paste

16 ounce tomato sauce

*** SOME changes can safely take place ***

You can use any kind of pepper you wish, so long as it does not exceed the 1 1/2 cups

You can reduce onion, pepper or garlic but you can not increase it

You can omit cilantro, but you can not increase it

You can omit tomato sauce

My Tips

I personally have made this a ton of ways. I find that I like a mixture of 2 parts bottled lime juice and 1 part apple cider vinegar. White vinegar does not taste well in this!

Cilantro tends to lose its flavor. I have a mad passionate love affair with cilantro and I tend to drink it straight from the pan when I am cooking it so I put it in anyway, but for a real kick, add it again when you open it.

I use whatever peppers are on sale. In this batch I happened to run into a lot of red and yellow peppers, so you won’t see how vibrant it can look with green. I have given these  away at Christmas and they are gorgeous with all green peppers!