This is a mild, fresh-tasting salsa for home canning that even people who don’t usually like spicy salsa will like.
Note this is *not* an original recipe. It’s the USDA’s Choice Salsa guidelines; just with suggestions as to which ingredients to use in the ratios they suggest. So it’s a good illustration of how creative you can be, within those safety guidelines.
It’s got a bit of liquid on it, to make it safe for home canning, so when serving it, you may wish to tip the bottle into a sieve to drain excess liquid off, or, scoop out with a fork.
When serving it to a more hardened salsa crowd, you could stir in some hot sauce and fresh chopped coriander leaves (aka cilantro) at time of serving.
This makes a great layer in dips. It really has a very fresh taste to it that wakes up the rest of the dip. Small 1 cup ( quarter-litre / 8 oz / ½ pint) jars are ideal for this kind of use.
This recipe makes a lot; you may wish to cut it in half.
The recipe
Jar size choices: Quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml / 8 oz) OR half-litre (1 US pint / 500 ml/ 16 oz)
Processing method: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 12 x quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: 15 minutes either size jar
Mild Salsa
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg paste tomatoes (aka plum, Roma, etc. Coarsely chopped. Measured after prep. About 3 pounds / 6 cups.)
- 300 g onion (peeled, finely chopped. 2 cups / 10 oz. Measured after prep.)
- 1 kg bell pepper (seeded, finely chopped. 7 cups / 2 lbs. Measured after prep.)
- 250 ml lemon juice (bottled. 1 cup / 8 oz)
- 125 ml lime juice (bottled. ½ cup / 4 oz)
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cumin (dried)
- 1 teaspoon oregano (dried)
- 1 ½ teaspoons chile flakes (optional)
Instructions
- Peel the tomatoes. This is really easy done by washing the tomatoes, then boiling them for 1 to 3 to 5 minutes (depending on the tomatoes) in hot water, then plunging them into a pan, sink or large bowl of very cold water. The skins will pull off easily.
- Chop tomato coarsely into about 2 cm (½ inch) pieces and add to large pot.
- Prep onion (food processor with pulse button is fine) and add to pot.
- Wash the peppers, stem and seed them, then chop finely (food processor with pulse button is fine) and add to pot.
- Add lemon and lime juice to pot.
- Add seasonings (from the salt down to the chile flake) to the pot.
- Put pot on the burner and bring to a boil, stirring frequently to avoid scorching on bottom.
- When it hits a boil, reduce heat and let simmer for 3 minutes, stirring a few times.
- Spoon into quarter-litre (½ US pint) or half-litre (US pint) jars.
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process either size jar for 15 minutes; increase time as needed for your altitude.
- Best after at least a month of jar time.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.
Recipe notes
- For the pepper, you could swap out some sweet pepper and swap in an equal amount of peppier pepper.
- Don’t add any fresh herbs for canning, however much you want to. Add at time of serving. That way they’ll be truly fresh, anyway.
- You are peeling the tomatoes in order to reduce the bacterial load going into the canner.
- Yes, the lemon and lime juices must be bottled, in order to ensure that a guaranteed acidity is being used. See Ball All New if you prefer to make fresh juice salsas.
- If you want to increase the heat do so by using dried chile flake.
- You are allowed to increase / decrease saltiness / sweetness to taste. Thus:
- You can add more salt, to taste.
- Instead of the salt, you can use a non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub. We have found Herbamare Sodium-Free performs well in that regard.
- If you find the tomatoes not quite sweet enough, to round out the taste you can add a few tablespoons of sugar, or, Splenda, or liquid stevia ¼ teaspoon at a time.
The minced pepper
The minced onion
Recipe source
Based strictly on guidelines provided by: National Center for Home Food Preservation. Choice Salsa.
Nutrition information
Regular version
Using salt.
Per 4 tablespoons / 60 ml
- 17 calories, 152 mg sodium.
Salt-free version
Using a salt sub.
Per 4 tablespoons / 60 ml
- 17 calories, 4 mg sodium.
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 1 to 7 tablespoons: 0 points; 8 to 15 tablespoons: 1 point.
Even though the USDA guidelines let us “invent” our own recipe, it still ended up well and truly deep in the safe zone, way below the max cutoff of 4.6.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Better Stevia ® is a registered trademark of the NOW Foods Company.
* Herbamare ® is a registered trademark of the A. Vogel Corporation.
Leanna
Worked great for my first time ever making salsa😄😄😄