Best Canned Salsa Recipe Ever

Learn how to make an easy and flavorful salsa for canning that's safe, uses all-natural ingredients, and is thicker than typical canned salsas. It's our family's favorite and I know it will become yours, too!

Our family LOVES salsa - if we don't eat it everyday, at least I think it's safe to say we eat it every other day. So of course I would want to make our own salsa for canning from the garden tomatoes, peppers, and onions we grow. It took a number of years, though, to find a safe salsa recipe that was the one.

When I finally did find my favorite salsa for canning, there was no going back - every August and September I make enough batches to see us through to the next season. Store-bought canned salsa can't hold a candle to this!

Homemade Salsa Recipe With Canned Tomatoes

The one thing I learned when teaching myself to can salsa was that in order to use a water-bath canner to make salsa shelf stable, it's important to use a recipe from a trusted source that uses USDA guidelines.

This is because there are so many low-acid ingredients in salsa (peppers, onions, and garlic) that it creates a delicate balance between the acid (tomatoes and usually another ingredient like vinegar or lemon juice) and the low-acid ingredients.

So I started testing recipes from a Kerr canning book, the Ball Blue Book, the Oregonian newspaper, and some preserving books from the library that all used safe guidelines. While they all had good flavor (I was using wonderful produce, after all!), they were usually really watery and/or vinegary. Boo.

The Best Cherry Tomato Salsa Recipe

I think others felt the same way, because a recipe soon appeared on the USDA website for a Tomato-Tomato Paste Salsa. It called for two 12-oz cans of tomato paste and 2 cups bottled lemon juice instead of vinegar, which produced a thick sauce and minus the overly vinegar taste.

Sadly, my search for the best recipe wasn't at an end, though. We found that the salsa wasn't very spicy and when I took the time to look at the ingredients of bottled lemon juice (it must be bottled - fresh lemon juice doesn't have the consistent acid level for canning) I saw that it's full of preservatives!

I continued looking for the perfect canned salsa recipe and finally found the one that is now our favorite in a book from the library that published only tested recipes (I wish I had the title, but I just copied the recipe all those years ago before blogging).

Home Canned Salsa Recipe Plus 10 Tips For Canning Salsa Safely

It used just one small can of tomato paste and only 3/4 cup of vinegar, so it's still thick and the vinegar doesn't overpower the flavor.

NOTE: according to the USDA, it is safe to substitute bottled lemon juice for the vinegar in this recipe if you wish, but NOT the other way - it is not safe to substitute vinegar for lemon juice in other recipes, since lemon is more acidic than vinegar.

I adapted the recipe by increasing the peppers by 1/2 cup, and then decreasing the onion by a 1/2 cup to keep the recipe in balance. This makes the salsa a bit more spicy, which we like. I also added a few more dry seasonings which is okay to change in canning recipes since it doesn't affect acidity.

Fresh Easy Salsa (with Canned Tomatoes) • Fivehearthome

You can NOT add any other ingredients to this recipe, including mango, pineapple or fresh cilantro. It has not been tested with these ingredients.

This salsa is really easy - the majority of time is spent prepping the ingredients, though a food processor makes it quicker. It cooks for only 30 minutes, which gives you just the right amount of time to get all the canning equipment in order and jars cleaned.

I use about 1/2 slicing tomatoes and 1/2 paste tomatoes- the slicers have some of that great flavor and the paste tomatoes add thickness, so I like to include both.

The Best Chunky Salsa Recipe For Canning

You can peel, core, and chop the tomatoes by hand OR use the food processor method to cut your prep time drastically:

I now just core and quarter the tomatoes and use the food processor to chop them- peel and all! No one can tell there are peels in the finished salsa and it takes SO much less time.

Either way you chop, you want to measure out 7 cups. There are both large and small tomato chunks in the processed option, but it's not a big deal.

The Best Restaurant Style Salsa Recipe Made With Canned Ingredients From The Pantry!

When hand-chopping tomatoes, you can drain any water that accumulates while cutting them, which helps make a thicker salsa. However, this doesn't work with the quicker processing method, so the resulting salsa is a bit thinner, but the savings in time totally makes up for it, in my opinion.

After a number of readers mentioned that they wondered if it was safe to keep the tomato skins on, I reached out to the Oregon State Extension Office about it. The professor I emailed with spent quite a bit of time researching this, in fact saying, this one has been killing me – very difficult to track down any reliable information.

Due to the consistent history of using peeled tomatoes in canning recipes, processing conditions using skin-on tomatoes have never been evaluated. It is possible that the skins have minimal to no impact on the thermal transfer, but this has not been verified. Joy W., Associate Professor, Oregon State University Extension

Homemade Salsa Recipe

She cited the studies that have been done on tomatoes, finding some bacteria in the cores but that the remainder of the tomato was low in bacteria, as well as mentioning the botulism outbreaks in plain tomatoes in the 70s that resulted in the recommendation to always add citric acid or lemon juice. There's nothing else, the NCHFP mainly states removing the peels are for texture reasons.

With modern appliances like food processors, we can chop the tomatoes and skins for products like chutney and salsa and have no issues with taste and texture. The tomatoes are still cored, so the root and stem ends that might have bacteria in them (according to the study you mentioned) are removed. Also, my tomatoes are grown and harvested by me using no pesticides.

Since I eat the skins of my peppers grown right next to the tomatoes and can them with the skins in jellies and chutneys, why not the tomatoes?

Homemade Salsa For Canning

Because of this, I'll keep processing the tomatoes for chutney and salsa with the peels because it saves so much time, but I will mention the caution to my readers with your recommendation and let them make their own decision.

Want gloves for this part. The one time I didn't use them I couldn't sleep that night because of the burning sensation in my hands that no amount of washing could remove!

Once you're gloved up, cut in half and seed enough Anaheim chilies to equal 1-1/2 cups chopped. You can use other mild, long green chilies or even add some sweet peppers if you'd like. It's okay to change the

Salsa Recipe For Canning

Note on the photos: I was doubling the recipe when taking these photos, so there is more in each one than a single batch would call for - so yes, you can double the recipe!

You can simply cut the peppers in large chunks and put them in a food processor to do the rest, or chop them by hand. I like the way the processor chops them mostly fine, but also leaves a few larger pieces so that there are some peppers in every spoonful.

Then chop jalapeño peppers to equal 1/2 cup, seeding if desired (leaving the seeds will result in a spicer salsa). Add them to the stockpot.

The Best Homemade Salsa Recipe (video)

TIP: if you want a milder salsa, you can skip the jalapeños and use all milder peppers. If you'd like it spicier, decrease the mild peppers and increase the jalapeños. You can play around with the types of peppers you like best, just not the amount - a total of 2 cups of peppers for one batch is the limit for safety.

Peel and quarter onions, chopping enough to equal 1-1/2 cups, either by hand or in a food processor, and add to the pot.

NOTE: there are 6 cloves instead of the 3 the recipe calls for - remember I'm doubling the recipe, in order to get 10 to 11 pints out of each canning session.

Homemade Salsa Recipe {restaurant Style}

Once the garlic is in the pot, add the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and boil gently for 30 minutes. Stir often, making sure it doesn't burn on the bottom

TIP: cheap, thin-bottomed stock pots tend to burn, but thicker-bottomed pots don't - it's worth it to pay a few dollars more. #lessonlearned

8) While the salsa is cooking, you can prepare your water-bath canner, jars, and lids. Here's step-by-step canning guide where I take you through the whole process if you've never canned before. And here is a video tutorial you can watch as well:

The Best Homemade Salsa For Canning

Nope, you don't have to can salsa - you can freeze salsa! Just let the finished salsa cool enough to put into freezer safe containers and be sure to leave a good 2-inches headspace to allow for expansion.

TIP: If you are freezing, you can