Canning homemade salsas

In the grand scheme of things, salsas are a relatively new addition to the home canner’s arsenal. Traditionally, the focusses were instead on relishes and pickles. But now, salsas are as firmly established as are chutneys.

For home-canning, salsas must have a certain acidity level to ensure that they will be safe from food poisoning.

You are urged by all the reputable home-canning sources:

• not to use your own recipe;
• only to use lab-tested recipes from reputable sources;
• to follow those recipes closely;
• not to use larger jar sizes than explicitly permitted by the recipe;
• not to use any old recipe you may find on a blog (unless it’s sourced from one of those lab-tested recipes).

Choice Salsa

Before starting to list the recipes, it may be helpful to single out from that list the recipe that many people feel is one of the most useful salsa recipes out there: Choice Salsa, developed by the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It’s not so much a recipe as a set of guidelines inside which you can create your own salsa recipe.

It will still have a bit more liquid on it than most people might like — it’s there for safety — but it’s the work of microseconds to drain it off when serving, either by just tipping the whole jar into a sieve, or, serving with a fork.

You can can some delicious salsa creations with these guidelines. Stir in some fresh herbs upon opening, if desired.

Salsas on Healthy Canning

We’ve worked with 17 tested salsa recipes so far as of spring 2022. Those salsa recipes for home canning are here.

Tested salsa recipe sources

Here is a list, current as of summer 2016, of sources for lab-tested salsa recipes. There are close to 60 lab-tested recipes from reputable sources to choose from, so you are almost certain to find a few that interest you.

Do not reduce in these recipes any acid called for in the form of vinegar, lemon or lime juice, and do not increase any of the non-acid ingredients such as onion, pepper, etc.

Lemon juices and lime juices called for are interchangeable. Many recipes will specify bottled lemon or lime juice, or just say lemon or lime juice. When you see that, use bottled. If however a tested recipe from a reputable source such as Ball or Bernardin labs test kitchens call for fresh lemon or lime juice, go ahead and use that (though you may also use bottled if that is all you have to hand or that is your preference.) Those recipes will have been tested for safety to work with the pH ranges of fresh juices.

All jars of home-canned salsa must be processed to be shelf stable, no exceptions. Otherwise, store in refrigerator, or freeze.

All the tested recipes are for water-bath canning (or steam-canning as an equivalent), with the exception of a single one for pressure-canning: the Mexican Tomato Sauce . (Note though that it’s more of a cooking sauce than a salsa per se.)

Universities and Extensions

• 1992 Original Washington State University recipes ( 7 recipes) ^[1] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension.
• 2015 USDA versions (8 recipes)
• 2014 South and North Dakota Extension Services versions (7 recipes)

The most up to date list of USDA / Extension Services tested salsa recipes is at the National Center for Home Food Preservation (13 recipes)

• Chile Salsa (Hot Tomato-Pepper Sauce)
• Chile Salsa II
• Choice Salsa
• Mango Salsa
• Mexican Tomato Sauce
• Peach Apple Salsa
• Spicy Cranberry Salsa
• Spicy Jicama Relish
• Tomatillo Green Salsa
• Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa
• Tomato and Green Chile Salsa
• Tomato Salsa with Paste Tomatoes
• Tomato Taco Sauce

Note1: Many of the recipes from the USDA / Extensions / NCHFP mentioned above are repeats; there are about 14, maybe 15, unique recipes all together. All the above recipes also appear in the book So Easy to Preserve.

Note2: Many people think of salsas as being only “fresh salsas” for chips and dip, but “salsa” means “sauce” in Spanish, and can mean either a fresh or a cooked sauce. Some of the salsas above — Mexican Tomato Sauce, Tomato / Tomato Paste Salsa, and Tomato Taco Sauce — are cooked salsas, and great for use with enchiladas, etc.

Note3: the Mexican Tomato Sauce must be pressure canned even though it has 4 oz / 125 ml of vinegar in it. That acidification is not sufficient for water-bath processing. The National Center for Home Food Preservation says they still regard it as a low-acid product: “There are some tomato products in the USDA canning procedures that only have a pressure process listed (for example…. Mexican tomato sauce, etc.).  If a pressure process is the only listed option, then it is the required processing method and we do not have a boiling water process option available. These products made according to the stated recipes and procedures are low-acid food mixtures.” ^[2]  NCHFP. Burning Issue: Acidifying Tomatoes When Canning. 4 Sept 2013. Accessed June 2016.

Jarden – Ball Blue Book. Edition 37. 2014.

• Fiesta Salsa (p. 36)
• Jalapeno Salsa (p. 36)
• Papaya-Pineapple Salsa (p. 126)
• Peach-Chili Salsa (p. 126)
• Spicy Tomato Salsa (p. 37)
• Tomatillo Salsa (pp. 37)
• Salsa Verde (p. 36)
• Zesty Salsa (p. 126)

Also online:

• Roasted Tomato-Chipotle Salsa

Jarden – Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving. 2013.

These recipes are on pages 56 to 59.

• Carrot Pepper Salsa
• Fresh Vegetable Salsa
• Peach Salsa
• Pepper Pear Salsa
• Roasted Tomato Chipotle Salsa
• Tomato Fruit Salsa
• Tomatillo Salsa
• Salsa Verde
• Summer Salsa

Also online:

• Fiesta Salsa
• Fiesta Corn Salsa
• Spicy Tomato Salsa
• Easy Orchard Salsa
• Spicy Tomato Salsa

Jarden – Ball / Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving. 2015.

The Complete Book’s list of salsas seems to be for the most part a merger of recipes from Ball and Bernardin.

• Carrot Pepper Salsa (p. 211)
• Fiesta Salsa (p. 208)
• Fresh Vegetable Salsa (p. 203)
• Jalapeno Salsa (p. 209)
• Peach Salsa (p. 215)
• Peppery-Pear Salsa (p. 214)
• Pineapple Chili Salsa (p. 216)
• Roasted Tomato-Chipotle Salsa (p. 206)
• Roasted Tomatillo-Chipotle Salsa (p. 213)
• Salsa Verde (p. 210)
• Spicy Tomato Salsa (p. 205)
• Summer Salsa (p. 204)
• Tomatillo Salsa (p. 212)
• Zesty Salsa (p. 207)

Jarden – Ball All New Book of Canning and Preserving. 2016.

Note: many of these salsa recipes in Ball’s All New Book call for fresh lime juice. The recipes have been tested in Balls’ test kitchens to be safe with fresh juice, so there is no safety worry. If however all you have to hand is bottled, or you prefer to use bottled, you may go ahead and use that.

Ball also says that for these recipes you may use Key Limes (aka Mexican Limes) or the larger Persian Limes (aka Bearss, aka California) limes (yes, even though Key Limes are just slightly less acidic.)

When Ball calls for 3 limes to yield 4 tablespoons (¼ cup) of lime juice, they are clearly thinking of the smaller Key Limes. The larger Persian Limes have more juice in them, so you’d probably only need one of those limes: just juice either variety until you make up the volume quantity of lime juice called for (e.g. ¼ cup / 4 tbsp / 60 ml.)  Tip to get more juice out of a lime: zap in microwave from 10 to 30 seconds, depending on the power of your microwave, then roll on counter, then juice.

We have a page dedicated to discussing the use of fresh lime juice in these salsas.

• Caramelized Pineapple-Habanero Salsa (page 165)
• Chipotle Tomatillo Salsa (page 171)
• Corn and Cherry Tomato (page 163)
• Fiery Peach Salsa (page 173)
• Green Tomato Salsa Verde (page 163)
• Habanero Tomatillo  (page 163)
• Mango Chipotle (page 163)
• Roasted Salsa Verde (page 167)
• Roasted Tomato Guajillo Salsa (page 174)
• Salsa Ranchera (page 176)
• Salsa Roja (page 166)
• Smoky Sour Cherry-Tequila Salsa (page 170)
• Summer Corn and Peach Salsa (page 175)
• Tomato Jalapeno (page 163)

To be clear, for other Ball salsa recipes appearing in other places calling for bottled lime juice, you must still use the bottled lime juice for those recipes.

Ziedrich, Linda. The Joy of Pickling. 2009.

• Tomato Salsa (p. 355)
• Salsa Verde (p. 357)

Canadian Living Test Kitchen. The Complete Preserving Book. 2012.

• Chipotle Salsa (p. 199)
• Green Garden Salsa (p. 200)
• Peppy Salsa (p. 196)
• Sassy Sweet Salsa (p. 205)
• Spanish Tomato Salsa (p. 204)
• Tomatillo Salsa (p. 202)
• Tomato and Eggplant Salsa (p. 207)
• Yellow Tomato and Mango Salsa (p. 206)

Also online:

• Tomato-Pepper Salsa

Mrs Wages

Kansas State Extension says, “Packaged salsa mixes, such as Mrs. Wages or Ball, are also safe to use.” ^[3] McEwan, Kathy. Choice Salsa. Southwind Extension District – Iola Office. News Column for week of September 9, 2013. Accessed March 2015.

Follow directions on the Mrs Wage package you are using, and don’t add any additional fresh veggie such as pepper etc or any corn or any black beans or you could mess up the pH and the safety. It’s fine to add some dried chile flakes or dried chipotle powder or some tabasco sauce. But don’t try to adjust the recipes and compensate with more vinegar etc: just use them as they are for what they are.

What are some of the complaints about the tested recipes?

Mexicans particularly object to the tested recipes that were developed.

They balk at the requirements of some for tomato paste and tomato sauce, and are appalled by the use of vinegar, let alone the quantities of it. They say it is really salsa more for gringos than latinos.

The authorities’ response is “if you don’t like it, then make your own but don’t can it.”

Some people feel that the addition of liquid acid changes both the taste and the texture. You will see user comments such as:

The need for more vinegar or lime juice than a fresh salsa has really changes the taste of a canned salsa. And then the texture’s a problem. Comes out too watery, especially once the vinegar is added.” ^[4]24 August 2011 user discussion thread at Serious Eats. https://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2011/08/need-recipes-and-advice-for-canning-salsas.html

Linda Ziedrich has this advice about home canned salsa:

[Home canned salsa] is a preserved version of salsa cruda, the popular Mexican table sauce. Because this salsa is briefly cooked, it doesn’t quite taste like the fresh version, but I think you’ll much prefer it to store-bought salsa, most of which is made from tomato paste. For a fresher taste, stir in some chopped cilantro just before serving. Paste tomatoes work best… juicy tomatoes make a runny salsa…. If your salsa still turns out runny, just drain off the excess liquid before serving.” ^[5] Ziedrich, Linda. The Joy of Pickling. Boston, Massachusetts: The Harvard Common Press. 2009. Page 356

Possibly the least acidic recipe from the USDA / Extension set of recipes is: Tomato Salsa (using paste tomatoes). It has less than 4 tablespoons of acid per ½ litre (US pint).

What salsa recipes are the least vinegary

In our experience so far (fall 2017) of trying all the lab-tested salsa recipes, we’d suggest you consider these as being amongst the least “vinegary.”

Salsa Ranchera

Pico de Gallo

Chipotle Tomatillo

Roasted Salsa Verde

Tomatillo Salsa

Again, though, remember Linda Ziedrich’s caution from above: if you are making a tomato salsa, and using nice juicy slicing tomatoes, you’ve only yourself to blame if the salsa is really liquidy!

Adjusting the salsa recipes from the tested recipes

Can I add sugar to salsa that tastes sour?

North Carolina State says,

Yes. Sugar can safely be added to a salsa recipe. Sugar is often added to offset the tartness of the vinegar. But you should never alter the amount of vinegar. Vinegar is essential to making the salsa acidic enough [to be safely canned.]” ^[6] Fraser, Angela. Celebrate with Safe Salsa. North Carolina State University Extension Server. PCSW-516. Page 2. Accessed March 2015 at https://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/pdfs/FCS516WAccessibleApril09.pdf.

The University of Wisconsin notes that you can decrease the sugar in any of the salsa recipes. It’s not there for safety, just taste. ^[7] Canning Tomatoes & Tomato Products. Powerpoint Presentation. Lunch & Learn, 23 July 2012. University of Wisconsin Extension. Accessed March 2015.

A few drops of liquid stevia would actually do the trick better than sugar, as it wouldn’t require dissolving, even.

Changing the acid

Bottled lemon or bottled lime juice can be used interchangeably. ^[8] Ibid.

You can replace vinegar with bottled lemon or bottled lime juice.

You cannot do the reverse: replace bottled lemon or bottled lime juice with vinegar.

The reason is that bottled lemon and bottled lime juice are actually far more acidic than vinegar. By using them instead of vinegar, you’re increasing the acidity of the recipe, which is safe. But if you went the other way and used vinegar instead of them when they were called for, you’d be lowering the acidity and thus lowering the safety of the recipe.

Some people have asked us why the reputable sources (the National Center, etc) don’t draw on the use of something obvious, like citric acid, for acidity to produce less runny salsa products. That is a very good question but we just don’t know the answer. The book, Putting Food By, does cover what the citric acid equivalents would be for vinegar, etc.

Salsa is too runny

You can use paste tomatoes ( e.g. plum tomatoes) rather than slicing tomatoes to reduce the amount of tomato liquid you are dealing with.

If before canning you think it’s too runny, the only thickener allowed is tomato paste. Don’t drain it, and don’t use any other thickener other than tomato paste.

Washington State says,

Do not thicken salsas with flour or cornstarch before canning. After you open a jar to use, you may pour off some of the liquid or thicken with cornstarch. Salsa can be thickened by adding tomato paste.” ^[9] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Accessed January 2015.

Don’t increase quantities of onion, pepper (or celery)

Washington State advises to not increase the total amount of peppers in any recipe. However, you may substitute one type of pepper for another.

You may substitute bell peppers for some or all of the long green chiles. Canned chiles may be used in place of fresh. … Do not increase the total amount of peppers in any recipe. However, you may substitute one type of pepper for another.” ^[10]Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Page 1. Accessed January 2015.

Wisconsin says,

Don’t add more hot peppers, as that will decrease acidity. Instead, swap out an amount of regular peppers and replace that amount with hot peppers.” ^[11] Canning Tomatoes & Tomato Products. Powerpoint Presentation. Lunch & Learn, 23 July 2012. University of Wisconsin Extension. Accessed March 2015.

The USDA Complete Guide says,

Red, yellow or white onions may be substituted for each other. Do not increase the total amount of onions in any recipe.” ^[12] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 3-20

Spices and herbs

The researchers at Washington State advise this:

The amounts of spices and herbs may be altered in these recipes. Cilantro and cumin are often used in spicy salsas. You may leave them out if you prefer a salsa with a milder taste. For a stronger cilantro flavor, add fresh cilantro just before serving the salsa.” ^[13] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Page 2. Accessed January 2015.

The USDA Complete Guide says,

Spices and herbs add unique flavoring to salsas. The amounts of dried spices and herbs in the following recipes (black pepper, salt, dried oregano leaves, and ground cumin) may be altered or left out.” ^[14] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 3-20

Don’t use fresh herbs unless the recipe calls for them. If you really want to use fresh cilantro (aka fresh coriander) in a salsa recipe, there are actually many tested recipes out of those listed earlier that call for it in copious amounts. But don’t add to a recipe that isn’t prepared to cope with the low-acidity it would be adding.

Use of green tomatoes

The original Washington State researchers advised,

“You may substitute green tomatoes or tomatillos for tomatoes in any of these recipes.”  ^[15] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Page 1. Accessed January 2015.

Juice off of tomatoes

Note: don’t drain off the tomato juice before canning:

If the procedures call for chopped tomatoes, use the whole tomato after peeling and coring. Do not drain the tomato, or remove all the liquid and juices.” ^[16] United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Complete guide to home canning. Agriculture information bulletin No. 539. 2015. Page 3-21.

The acidity in the actual tomato liquid and juice is needed. A lot of the tomato’s acidity is in the juice:

It was interesting to note that this skinned and deseeded Roma tomato flesh had a pH of 4.6-4.7. This was most likely due to loss of acid in the tomato juice that was intentionally not used to avoid a watery salsa.”  ^[17] Studies on safe acidification of salsa for home boiling water canning. B. A. Nummer, M. Thacker, E. M. D’Sa, and E. L. Andress, Dept. of Foods & Nutrition, University of Georgia, 328 Hoke Smith Annex, Athens, GA 30602-4356. Paper 33C-9. Presented at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, July 14, 2004.

To avoid the problem of too much runny tomato juice, use a plum (aka paste type) tomato which has a more concentrated juice.

Adding corn / black beans to your salsa

Corn (sweetcorn) and black beans (or any kind of bean) are low acid ingredients and so cannot just be added to any salsa recipe for home canning. Doing so is high risk. The risk is that you would lower the acidity level to the point to allow some food nasties to spring into life, and worse case scenario, where botulism spores could germinate.

Healthycanning.com is aware of one tested salsa recipe which has corn as an ingredient; it is from Bernardin and uses the Ball / Bernardin Fiesta Salsa Mix. (Update: 2017. There are now a few from Ball as well.)

Fiesta Corn Salsa

As for black beans, can them separately in various size jars, and just open, drain, and quickly stir into the salsa upon serving. You’ll be glad to have jars of home canned black beans on hand for other uses as well. They taste so much better than the tinned ones from the store.

Summary of adjustments you can make

The original Washington State researchers advised,

The only changes you can safety make in these salsa recipes are to substitute bottled lemon juice for vinegar and to change the amount of spices and herbs. Do not alter the proportions of vegetables to acid and tomatoes because it might make the salsa unsafe by reducing the acidity. ^[18] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension. Page 6. Accessed January 2015.

To that, you can now add (as we saw above): swap the type but not quantity of onion used, and swap the type but not quantity of pepper used.

How much acidity is actually needed to make salsa safe?

Preliminary research has apparently shown the following, as reported in 2004:

Furthermore, 60ml lemon juice per pint safely acidified full pint volumes (263-304g) of onions, green peppers, or jalapeños alone to below pH 3.82.” ^[19] Studies on safe acidification of salsa for home boiling water canning. B. A. Nummer, M. Thacker, E. M. D’Sa, and E. L. Andress, Dept. of Foods & Nutrition, University of Georgia, 328 Hoke Smith Annex, Athens, GA 30602-4356. Paper 33C-9. Presented at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, July 14, 2004.

Note that that 2004 research still appears to be in a preliminary state, as of the current date (2015) because it hasn’t been followed up on with rigorous real-world testing, etc:

This recipe is not yet being recommended for public use until there is further research and peer review. Validation with more replications and in larger batch recipes and heat penetration studies are needed. The final goal is a recipe that could be validated to allow consumers some measure of creativity in mixing their low-acid ingredients in a tomato-based salsa to maintain safe acidification for boiling water canning. ^[20] Ibid.

Consequently, we have noted the research for academic purposes only. Perhaps some researchers in the future will get funding to pursue it.

Jar sizes for home canned salsa

Only ½ litre (1 US pint) sized jars have been approved. To be clear, 1 litre (US quart) size jars are not approved as safe. ^[21] Canning Tomatoes & Tomato Products. Powerpoint Presentation. Lunch & Learn, 23 July 2012. University of Wisconsin Extension. Accessed March 2015.

You could of course use smaller ¼ litre (½ US pint) sizes. Such a size can be the perfect amount when you want to use salsa as a layer in a dip, without opening a larger size that might linger half-used forever in the fridge.

Shelf-life of home canned salsa

North Carolina State says,

The shelf life of home canned salsa from tested recipes is 12 to 18 months. It’s safe to consume past that if the seal is intact and it looks and smells okay but the quality may degrade.” ^[22] Fraser, Angela. Celebrate with Safe Salsa.

Why can’t I pressure can my home-made salsas?

It’s easy to understand why people might think pressure canning salsa would be better. Pressure canning in general uses less water (because pressure canning uses steam) so it’s more environmental, it can seem faster because actual processing times on paper can be faster for some other items such as crushed tomatoes, and, it can seem that it would be mystically safer because of the added pressure / heat.

There is only one salsa recipe from a reputable source that calls for pressure canning. That is Mexican Tomato Sauce, published by South and North Dakota Extension Services. It can only be pressure canned. But that’s an exception to the salsa recipes published – all the others call for water-bath processing.

The number one rule we have to live by is to never to guess at processing times. If no processing time has been developed for processing a salsa recipe in a pressure canner, we can’t do it.

That being said, that would be a very unsatisfying answer, so let’s look at why it is they might not have developed pressure canning times for salsas. Were they just being short-sighted, or ornery?

1. When pressure canning, it can take about 15 minutes on a super high burner before you start to get steam venting, then you have to actually vent for another 10 minutes, then put weight on, then wait another 20 minutes if not more as the pressure mounts before you can start counting processing time. That’s at least 45 minutes gone before you have even got started. Then you have your processing time — say you were making Ball’s Zesty Salsa and decided to guess and use its water-bath processing time of 15 minutes. Now we’re at 60 minutes total. Then you have your cool-down time, during which things keep on cooking. That’s another 30 minutes usually. Finally, when the canner reaches 0, you then do 10 minutes with the weight off, and then a final 10 minutes with the top off before the jars can be removed. Now we’re at 110 minutes total.

So that’s a total of about 110 minutes that your salsa has been cooking at various temperatures, and a good deal of that time above 100 C.

The veg in most dipping salsas should have some texture, but after that amount of time and heat any pepper and onion will come out like moosh instead. (Admittedly that reservation about texture wouldn’t apply to smooth tomato sauce-like salsas.)

So the quality would have most people shrieking at Ball, Bernardin and the USDA, and they don’t want that. They have enough stress.

2. The extra heat in a pressure canner does’t make the salsa any more safe. In a tested recipe, it’s already made 110% safe by first proper acidification to control botulism, and then a short period of heat processing to kill off other nasties which don’t mind a bit of vinegar such as salmonella, listeria, mould spores, etc. Extra heat and time on top of those two factors in a pressure canner is a waste of resources trying to make it safer than that. It’s like people who pressure cook their everyday meat stocks for 3 hours — after 50 minutes, it was as ready as it was gonna get. It’s increasing your carbon foot print for no reason. :{

3. There are no time savings versus water-bath canning. Realistically, you are looking at about 110 minutes before you are setting the jars out to cool, and that’s about the same amount of time it would take to water-bath process, from start to finish, a large batch of jars. A small batch of jars in a small water bath might even be faster.

So, the salsa recipe developers probably felt that the process would be overkill, provide no time or energy savings, and, result in an unsatisfactory product to boot.

Now, there is a happy positive alternative suggestion instead:

Get a steam canner.

Steam canning was approved by the NCHFP in June 2015 as an equivalent to water bath canning for high acid foods.

Put jars in, put lid on, within 10 minutes if not sooner, depending on how powerful the burner you have it on, you are ready to start the actual process timing. In a steam canner, you can have about three loads of salsa processed in the same time or less as it would hypothetically take to do one load in a pressure canner or water-bath canner.

You’ve got the water-saving benefits that pressure canning would theoretically give, along with the energy-saving and time-saving benefits that neither pressure-canning or water-bath canning could ever deliver.

History of home-canned salsa recommendations

In 1989, Ball published the first tested recipe for home canned salsa, entitled simply “Salsa”. It called for cider vinegar. Today, it would seem more like a tomato relish with a fancy name than a salsa.

In 1992, the first tested set of salsa recipes for home canning was published by Washington State Extension. ^[23] Hillers, Val and Richard Dougherty. Salsa Recipes for Canning. Washington State University Cooperative Extension . Their salsa recipes were incorporated into the 2009 USDA Complete Guide. ^[24] Andress, Elizabeth. “History, Science and Current Practice in Home Food Preservation.” Webinar. 27 February 2013. Accessed January 2015. (And carried into the 2015 USDA Complete Guide.)

Washington State released 7 “authorized” salsa recipes, as follows:

1. Chile Salsa (Hot Tomato-Pepper Sauce)
2. Tomatillo Green Salsa
3. Tomato Salsa (Using Slicing Tomatoes)
4. Tomato/Green Chile Salsa
5. Tomato Salsa (using Paste Tomatoes)
6. Tomato Taco Sauce
7. Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa

The original Washington State versions did not allow for the use of lime juice.

In 2009, the USDA accepted and published those in its Complete Guide, adding one more, called “Chile Salsa II”:

1. Chile Salsa (Hot Tomato-Pepper Sauce)
2. Chile Salsa II
3. Tomatillo Green Salsa
4. Tomato Salsa (Using Slicing Tomatoes)
5. Tomato/Green Chile Salsa
6. Tomato Salsa (using Paste Tomatoes)
7. Tomato Taco Sauce
8. Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa

The USDA allowed for the use of lime juice in two of the recipes: Tomato Salsa (Using Paste Tomatoes) and Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa

In 2014, the South and North Dakota Extension Services jointly published a salsa brochure, which used the original Washington State list, but did one modification. They dropped the “Tomato Salsa (Using Slicing Tomatoes)” recipe, and added a “Mexican Tomato Sauce” recipe, which is essentially a meatless spicy spaghetti sauce consisting of tomato, some onion, and hot peppers. The vinegar used is relatively low compared to the other salsa recipes, only 125 ml (½ cup) for a final 7 litres (US quarts) of product. The recipe must be pressure canned. ^[25] Garden-Robinson, Julie et al. Canning and Freezing Tomatoes and Making Salsa. South and North Dakota Extension Services. July 2014. Accessed March 2015.

The 2015 USDA Complete Guide reproduced its 2009 list.

The current (2016) National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP) salsa list builds on the USDA list. It drops “Tomato Salsa (Using Slicing Tomatoes)” but adds the “Mexican Tomato Sauce” from South and North Dakota Extension Services, as well as a few more brand new ones for a total of 13 salsa recipes. Some of them are quite innovative, such as the Jicama and Cranberry sauces, and as such, might be more acceptable as people won’t be comparing acidified pure tomato salsas with the unacidified ones they are used to.

The NCHFP may have dropped the “Tomato Salsa (Using Slicing Tomatoes)” for quality reasons; perhaps there were too many queries about runniness. They note, “If you only have slicing tomatoes available, use the Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa recipe.” ^[26] https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_salsa/tomato_taco_sauce.html

Perhaps most importantly, the NCHFP introduced the “Choice Salsa” recipe, which allows consumers creativity in the choice of some ingredients, and the use of either lemon or lime juice.

Cooking with canning

Taco Skillet

Further reading

Canning Your Own Salsa Recipe. National Center for Home Food Preservation . 3 July 2008. Accessed March 2015.

Homemade salsa is a science, not an art. Treiber, Lisa. Michigan State University Extension. 18 July 2014.

Studies on safe acidification of salsa for home boiling water canning. B. A. Nummer, M. Thacker, E. M. D’Sa, and E. L. Andress, Dept. of Foods & Nutrition, University of Georgia, 328 Hoke Smith Annex, Athens, GA 30602-4356. Paper 33C-9. Presented at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV, July 14, 2004.

Why Add Lemon Juice to Tomatoes and Salsa Before Canning? Garden-Robinson, Julie, et al. North Dakota State University Extension Service. Year Unknown. FN-1396.