Cultural - Making Salsa

It’s been several years since I made salsa, but we ran completely out of what I made several years ago.

And I needed to make some more. We prefer the salsa I make as I use only veggies like tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc. I don’t add extra thickeners or sugar, etc. This way I know what’s in it!

So here are my pictures from the day. I did not want it to take all day, so I did work at not buying too many tomatoes. I tend to overdo everything I do! (LOL)

(I wrote that part before I went to the farmer’s market.)

I got all my jars out of the cabinet where I had them stored as I used them up. I wanted to use small ones as if I open a big one, sometimes the salsa goes bad before we use it up, so now that it is just my husband and I, we don’t eat as much as when all the kids were home.

I went to the open market and we bought tomatoes - 28 kg (62 lbs) not 20 (44 lbs) as I had planned! They were so inexpensive, we bought all the vendors had left - which was 28 kg - at about 75 cents/kilo which is less than 35 cents/lb. for paste tomatoes.

I bought 5 kg of onions and about 5 kg of peppers. I also threw in a couple of hot peppers just for fun.

Here’s the food I ended up using to make this salsa.

I did get the yellow and purple/red onions just for color.

A while ago I learned one of the keys to tasty salsa was to burn the skins of the tomatos and pepers. I had a hard time believing it but the lady who told me had lived in Mexico for many years, so I did believe her.

And I tried it. And I liked it.

So that is what I do now.

I use frying pans and put the tomatoes, onions and garlic right into the pan and let them burn. Not everywhere - but on both sides.

That also starts the cooking process.

I also put some in the oven, but I really prefer doing them on the top of the stove. It’s just kind of hard on my pans. :)

I actually have a couple of frying pans that are really used just for this now.

 

Anyway, after I got all the tomatoes and other veggies prepped, and charred a bit — that was over 2 hours worth of work — I used my food processor and started blending everything. Note - I do NOT take the skins off. I figure I eat tomatoes with the skins on all the time when I eat them fresh, so years ago I decided to just use them in the salsa. Obviously I char the skins so why would I do that if I were just going to remove them? (I know many people go to great lengths to take off the skins. I don’t get why it is necesary to take them off when we aren’t bothered by them.)

Then, after everything goes through the food processor, I put it together in various pots and pans and cooked it down - to get rid of a lot of the excess water.

 

Then, once it felt like it was about all cooked down, I needed the pans, and I put the boiling water on.

On the left I'm cooking it down and the right side is after I've cooked it a while to make it thicker without using thickeners.  This means my whole salsa is veggies.

I had already washed a lot of my jars and prepared the lids which we have in Poland. I threw the lids in a bit of boiling water and put the jars out and put a teaspoon of citric acid in each jar. I added some spices and salt to the mixture of tomatoes, peppers, etc. and put it in the other spices - more garlic and cilantro.

 

I then started spooning in the salsa, wiped the rim, put the lids on and started the boiling. I boiled the smaller ones for 15 minutes and at the end I had some bigger jars which I let boil for 25 minutes. Apparently I forgot to take pics of the boiling water bath. Oh well. I did have a pic of my starting to boil the lids. I also do that to help with the sterilization.

Once I was able to use all my pots on the stove top and get going with the boiling water bath, I was able to make more progress on the actual canning.

To make a long story shorter, I was working on finishing up the actual canning part until almost 8 pm. But because I was pretty much just waiting for the last of the jars to boil 25 minutes, I was able to do the cleanup during that time (most of it, anyway). Obviously I couldn’t clean the stovetop until all was finished and the pans removed.

But I did throw all the messy towels, wash clothes and anything else I got dirty into the washing machine.

I let all the jars cool overnight and the next morning I put it all on my shelves.

And I am done for another year or two or three.

I had over 50 small jars, and some larger ones since I ran out of the smaller ones. I figure if I had had all small jars, it would have been about 80 small ones.

My bigger jars and a few very strange sized ones.

So there you are. My counter top is cleared off and all the jars are now in the cabinets.

I feel great about having it done!

Oh, my husband ran to McD’s and brought back lunch so I could leave things cooking on the stovetop while we ate. Otherwise….I would have been in the kitchen even later trying to finish.

When I returned the two plastic containers to the people at the open/farmer’s market the next day, the lady asked if I wanted some more paste tomatoes as they got a fresh batch. I just laughed and told her no, I had done enough. The market we went to is only about 4 miles from our house, so it’s not a long drive. The Polish word for the market is bazar which is an open air market. The best way for you to understand it is to think farmer’s market, even though it is technically not just for farmers, but rather for all kinds of vendors who set up outside.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen4 Comments