Summer is a fantastic time for not only eating delicious salsa made from your huge tomato harvest, but for canning salsa too! This is the best salsa recipe for canning, and is wonderful to make for your shelf every year. It has been tested and found to be safe when you follow the given instructions, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll mess up!
Part of the goodness of having a tomato harvest is that you can make so many different products out of them. With your ripe tomatoes, you may try your hand at canning them whole, making tomato sauce, pizza sauce, or as in we will learn in this post, canning salsa. You can even make salsa with green tomatoes, but for today, we will be canning the following delicious salsa recipe.
The Best Salsa Recipe for Canning
This recipe is from the Ball Blue Book. All canning recipes from this book are tested and found to be safe when directions are followed carefully. It has a lot of steps, but that is because I break up each step so it’s easy to follow. Just take canning this salsa step-by-step and you will have beautiful salsa on your shelf in no time for use in your chilis, with your chips, to season your burrito filling, or wherever you love to use salsa.
This post is going to assume that you understand the basics of water bath canning, but if you are doing this for the first time, or are not quite sure you have the basics down, you can refer to my post, “How to Can Food for Beginners”. It’s a fantastic article that takes you step-by-step through both canning processes. This time you will only need the information under the headings of Steps Before Processing, Water Bath Processing, and Steps After Processing.
Home Canned Salsa (fresh)
Ingredients
- tomatoes 6lbs
- jalapeno peppers 6
- dried hot chili peppers 9
- diced red onion 3 cups (or 2 medium)
- chopped cilantro tightly packed, 1-1/2 cups
- garlic 15 cloves
- salt 1 Tbsp
- crushed red pepper 3/4 tsp.
- red wine vinegar 3/4 cup
Instructions
- Fill up a stock pot about halfway with water and bring to a boil. Do step 2 while you are waiting for that to happen.
- Remove all of the stems from tomatoes. Fill up a clean sink with water and dump all of your tomatoes in. Swish around and drain.
- This step will need to be done in separate small loads. Add about a quart of tomatoes at a time to the boiling water and allow to blanch (boil in the water) for 30 seconds to one minute. While you are waiting for the first load to finish, put some ice in a big bowl and fill up with water. Set on the counter near the pot you are using for the tomatoes.
- With a slotted spoon, remove the tomatoes from the boiling water and place them into the ice water for a couple of minutes. This will stop the cooking process. Remove from the ice water and place in a bowl for later. Repeat Steps 3 and 4 until all of the tomatoes have been blanched, cooled, and moved to the bowl for later.
- With a knife or a tomato corer, remove the stem end and slip the skins off the tomatoes. You can use the scraps to make tomato powder later if you have a dehydrator. At this point, you can cut your tomatoes into halves or quarters, or leave them whole.
- Dice tomatoes into 1/4-inch pieces.
- Remove stems and seeds from jalapenos and dice those too. (Use rubber gloves just for good measure.)
- Dice the red onion.
- Pour boiling water over chili peppers just to cover, then cover the bowl they are in for about 15 minutes to steep. Drain half the water off and puree chili peppers until smooth (about a minute).
- Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to a simmer and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or until thickened.
- Fill your hot jars with salsa, leaving a 1/2-inch head space. Remove air bubbles with a bubble remover, and clean the jar rim.
- Center the lid onto the clean jar rim and screw on the band only fingertip-tight. Repeat steps 6-9 until all jars are filled.
- Place jars into the simmering water in your canner. Water must cover jars by at least 1 inch. Adjust heat to medium/high and cover the canner. Wait until the water boils. Once water is boiling, set your timer for 15 minutes.
- Once processing time is finished, turn off the heat and uncover the canner. Allow canner to sit for 5 minutes, then remove jars with the jar lifter to a towel on your counter. Allow to cool for 12 hours. Test seals, label, and store jars
Notes
- 1,001- 3,000 5 minutes.
- 3,001- 6,000 10 minutes.
- 6,001- 8,000 15 minutes.
- 8,001-10,000 20 minutes.
Looking for a much easier salsa recipe with fewer ingredients for canning? Try this one!
Thanks so much for this. I never can because I am always afraid I am going to poison the family! This is so helpful.
Hi Linda! Nope, you sure won’t if you follow the directions I’ve given in this and my “How to Can Food for Beginners” post. You totally can do this!
Can you substitute can tomatoes in this recipe and it still be safe for canning? If so, how many cans of tomatoes it would take to equal the amount in recipe?
Yes you can! Here is a great page that confirms this, plus gives a bunch more great information on canning tomato salsa in general!
https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/canning-tomato-based-salsa
Hello! I really liked your post/tutorial. I have never canned before and am working up my nerve to get started. I was wondering how long is the shelf life of canned salsa? I don’t know if I missed it in the post.
Thank you
Oh! I should add that if I didn’t already!
The shelf life for canned foods is usually a year, but could be used after that. Some people keep canned foods for years, but I understand that nutritional value/quality diminishes over time. Ours never lasts a year, so I’m not sure it the flavor is different, though!
How many jars does this receipe make and what size?
6 pint jars!
How hot/ spicy is this recipe? There’s a lot of hot peppers in it!!
Hi Stacy! You know, I find that spicy is relative to the person! I don’t find it very spicy, but if you are not used to eating hot peppers, it will probably be for you!
Hi! What kind of dried peppers do you use?
Hi. It seems to have a good bit of garlic. Is the garlic supposed to be minced or diced? Do we add it whole to the pot to simmer? Thanks for your guidance.
Hi Jenny! Either way would be fine, unless your family realllly doesn’t like to bite into small pieces of garlic. Sometimes I use the minced garlic from the store instead of doing it myself, and that works just fine, too!
Can these be kept in the pantry?
Can you reduce the amount of peppers? I am wanting to do about 1/2 of the jalapeño and chili pepper
how many cups of tomatoes is 6lbs? I already peeled, cored and seeded my tomatoes. I found your recipe after I prepped them. Thank you.