New SPICY Salsa Recipe (For Canning)

Hello! Last year I published a blog about our first salsa canning experience. If you want to check it out, here it is. This year, we have been inundated with tomatoes. We've pretty much spent five days a week for the last two weeks either juicing, canning, or freezing tomatoes. Today, we started with four grocery bags of tomatoes, thinking that by making a ton of salsa (and giving away a couple dozen tomatoes to friends and family members) we would make a dent in the number of bags of tomatoes sitting on our kitchen table. NOPE. Still four bags. A couple of the bags are just "good sized" bags now as opposed to the "bursting" bags they were last night.

FOUR BAGS. FOUR. This is after the salsa and the
giving away of literally dozens of them.

So we will probably be making a second (giant) batch of this spicy salsa in the coming days to avoid wasting these delicious, home grown tomatoes. But for now, my husband and I are going to finish putting these mason jars away and nourish our aching, tomato and jalapeno-burned hands.

And for you? Here is the recipe! Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 16-20 C chopped fresh tomatoes (We used 20 because we ladled a lot of the juice off of the top so it was more chunky.)
• 1 C diced jalapenos (We used a heaping cup, along with some cayenne pepper... We like heat...)
• 1 C green bell peppers
• 2 large onions, chopped
• 12-15 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
• 1 1/2 C apple cider vinegar
• Juice from 3 limes (approx. 1/2 C lime juice)
• 2 T salt
• 2 T garlic powder
• 1 1/2 T black pepper
• 4 heaping T brown sugar

Directions

1. Chop everything that needs to be chopped.
2. Combine all ingredients into large stock pot.
3. Bring to simmer for one hour, 15 minutes, or until all ingredients are soft, stirring often. Make sure to skim the foam off the top every 15 minutes or so.
4. Meanwhile, make sure all canning jars, lids, rings, and utensils are sterilized.
5. Depending on what consistency you want your salsa to be, you can ladle off some of the tomato juice until you get it to your desired chunkiness. I would also suggest scooping out some and doing a taste test (once it's cooled a bit!) at this point and if you want it to be hotter, this is the time to add more cayenne pepper or even hot sauce.
6. Ladle salsa into jars, making sure to clean edges before putting lids and rings on.
7. Process in water bath for 15 minutes.
8. Remove from water bath with jar lifter and let sit and cool. Once jars are cool, lids should be sealed properly, indicated by the lids not popping up. If one doesn't seal completely, put it in the fridge and eat it over the next week!

Boilin'!