Salsa

A huge pot of tomatoes, peppers, and onions simmering on the stove sings of summer!  I made salsa on Saturday night after a run to Don and Jan's garden for additional produce.  It's been cool enough here that all that steam roiling around the kitchen was not the issue it sometimes is in August.

I really like Jan's salsa recipe so I followed it fairly closely.  I only processed 3 jars as my stove top is not designed for canning so I use a very small pot.  Also I wanted to see if there are any issues with taste or consistency with freezing most of the batch.  There will be visitors on Friday and we will give it a try then.

Straight From the Garden Salsa – Jan, August 2014

8 pounds of tomatoes

8 cups roughly chopped onion. I used 2 huge and 2 large

4 jalapeno peppers, seeded and roughly chopped

7 Anaheim peppers, seeded and roughly chopped

3 cloves of garlic

1 1/3 cup white vinegar

1  8-oz. can of tomato paste

1 tablespoon sugar

3 tablespoons salt

Wash, peel, and chop tomatoes, add to a very large pot.  I used a food processor and pulsed the onion, peppers and garlic to the size I felt would fit politely on a tortilla chip.  Add to the very large pot.  Stir in vinegar, tomato paste, sugar, and salt.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Simmer, uncovered, for 1 to 1 ½ hours until salsa has reduced to almost half.   I set my timer every 15 minutes so I would remember to stir.

The heat of the peppers is the big unknown in this recipe.  I was not willing to leave in any seeds so this batch is mild.  I like it that way.  I think the next time I will adjust by adding hot sauce at the end if I feel it needs more kick but really, I like my salsa fairly kick-less.

Makes 7-10 pints