Tomatoes are starting to ripen so we’re starting to can salsa. We were given a great recipe by a friend last year and are making it like crazy this year. I didn’t keep track of how much we made last year but I suspect it was 25-30 pints. We are planning to make alot more this year. From last year’s work, we learned a few things that has made the first batches a little easier. Roma tomatoes seem to peel the easiest for us. 
We freeze the tomatoes in advance and then let them slightly defrost before peeling them. In a half-frozen state, the skins just pull right off. We never make double recipes because our recipe requires that we boil the brew for 10 minutes. Boiling something thick for that long splatters all over. Our pot isn’t big enough to even really contain a single recipe. We also hand chop onions and green peppers but use a processor on the hot peppers. Most folks seem to like big chunks of sweet peppers and onions but a big chunk of habanero can bring about a religious experience…usually losing religion actually!
Anyhow, we love salsa! We eat the stuff on tacos, eggs, baked potatoes and with nacho chips. Typically, we make two varities, one pretty hot and one mild. Emily is starting to enjoy the hotter variety so we may increase production of that. We usually use a mix of jalapenos, cayennes and habaneros though we haven’t found habaneros for sale yet. Our crop of them failed miserably. Enough about that…the point is, salsa has to be one of my favorite things to can. Bring on the ‘maters!
OMG? You use habaneros in your salsa? You are one brave soul! I actaully do love’em but try to be careful of how much I’m using. I did get a great crop of habaneros last year by mistake. Our neighbor is a high school horticulture teacher and they get to try different seeds…anyways, they have mislabled some seedlings and I thought I had planted 6 jalapeno plants but turned out they were habaneros! I dried them and then grinded them up.
I love making salsa as well!
I think I must have gotten damaged somehow over the last few years…hot stuff rarely affects me nowadays. I had some (allegedly) hot fish at the beach this year and I couldn’t even taste it. Others tried it and said it was hot. I don’t know. I do love to eat salsa and spicy stuff though! My grandparents-in-law always buy me hot stuff to see if I will try it/will like it. Of course, I always do! My wife has started to eat much hotter stuff too so I think she is broken too!
Are you going to share those salsa recipes? I like mild salsa and will be looking for some good recipes within a few weeks when all the tomatoes start ripening.
Any chance you could post the recipe….. or is it top secret???? I am looking for a good salsa recipe!!!
Heather
I’ll do a recipe post this week sometime with a few recipes we like. The salsa recipe is semi-secret so we’ll need to do a security check but I expect things will work out. We make pretty good pizza sauce too!
It’s always fun to see pictures of what other country loving folks are putting in their pantry from the garden. I happed to see your blog on hillbilly2be.blogspot.com and ventured over to see your part of the country.
I love to tour blogs for the same reason Candylei. Thanks for visiting!