It is now late summer and we are blessed with an overabundance of tomatoes and peppers. It is always hard to predict how well they will do so we plant 12+ of each. This summer things have gone well with plenty to eat and give away. However, much of the summer has been hot and dry and recently we have had a lot of rain. This causes the tomatoes to split and rot if not picked aggressively. This means we have gallons of tomatoes, Yellow pears, orange and red cherries up through some really nice beef steaks (Romas were a bust). For peppers we have loads of sweet bananas, cubanelas (sweet), jalapenos and a decent number of poblanos.
Last weekend we made tomato sauce and this weekend is salsa. Low 70s temp and rainy so it was a perfect day to be in the kitchen.
Our oldest daughter Jessie brought up the idea canning of Pineapple – tomato salsa . This sounded interesting but there are few recipes available. However we found one on Taste of Home: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/spicy-pineapple-salsa and modified it slightly.
NOTE: canning of salsa is one of the more risky endeavors and you need to follow well documented and tested recipes. This is not a time to risk a “pinterest fail” and be poisoned with botulism. Don’t just take my word for it, read up on several of the University extension web sites prior to doing this for proper safety procedures such as:
- http://learningstore.uwex.edu/assets/pdfs/b3570.pdf
- http://www.extension.umn.edu/food/food-safety/preserving/tomatoes-salsa/canning-tomato-based-salsa-safely/
- http://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/uga/sensational_salsa.pdf
I really have to give credit to my wife Teal. She cleaned and chopped gallons of tomatoes today. On top of it she doesn’t eat tomatoes, salsa or pineapple (unless blended with rum and coconut). We ended up with 29 jars of salsa.
Our final version was close to the original but we went for roasting the pineapple and jalapenos as well as draining the pineapple to make it thicker. Final cooled sauce pH test with pH test paper came in at between 3.5 and 4 .well under the 4.6 required for safety.
So here is our version:
5 lbs tomatoes chopped – Yellow pear, orange sungolds, yellow plum
2 large yellow onions chopped
2 sweet banana pepper chopped – preferably ripe and reddish if you have them
1 can 12-18 oz crushed or chunk pineapple – drained (save juice for the rum drinks later)
1 can chunk pineapple roasted on skewers on the grill – go for caramelization – not black – beware it sticks badly
1 can (15oz) tomato paste. If only there was yellow tomato paste – the color would be better.
2 large sweet banana peppers seeded and chopped
2/3 c roasted, skinned , seeded and chopped jalapenos and / or poblanos – go for a nice dark roast and bubbly skin
1/3 c cider vinegar
1 Tablespoon salt (you can always add more later depending on your chips)
6-8 large garlic cloves minced (about 2/3 bulb of garlic)
2 tsp fresh ground cumin (seeds in your mortar and pestle – none of the pre ground stuff)
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
Mix and cook at a hard boil for 15 min.. Stir frequently. If you want a smoother consistency (as we did ) use a stick / immersion blender to smooth it out near the end of cooking (yes it will clog up but just shake the skins off).
Pack into pint jars and boiling water process for 15 min.
Enjoy.
We made a bunch of conventional tomato salsa as well – that recipe will be a subsequent post .
Mark Bronkalla