Learning you can can – a good survival skill!

One of the old saying that have always stuck in my head was the one that states, ‘give a man a fish and feed him for one day; teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.’ Not sure if that is the exact quote, but the meaning is sure clear. If things get rough and food at the grocery gets scarce, having canned goods put by (and the knowledge of how to can) can make all the difference. Can-can??

To that end, I bought just a few of the bare essentials and gave canning a batch of homemade salsa a go. For this, my first ever foray into the world of canning, I decided to make something that would not be easy to screw up. After all, I reasoned, salsa is not much more than some chopped tomatoes along with a few other veggies that are mixed with seasonings. I mean how hard could it be? Hmmm?

I also picked choose to use a high acid item (like tomatoes) as it would allow me to forego the purchase of a pressure cooker in favor of a simple hot water bath – much less expensive. My total expenses for everything you see here was about $35 which ain’t too bad. And, I must admit I was a little excited to see how it would all work out! For my first effort, I elected to make just two eight ounce jars. That way if things didn’t go well, I could cut my losses.

To begin with, I secured the following list of needed ingredients to make a custom blend:

1 pound of Roma tomatoes (less water and more meat)

1 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes

1/3 cup of onion, diced

1 garlic clove, diced

¼ tsp dried oregano

1 banana pepper (about 2 tbsp)

2 tbsp of parsley (fresh)

3 pinches of black pepper

1 tsp of dried red cayenne pepper, crushed

2 tbsp of diced celery

3 ounces of tomato paste (adds extra body)

4 tbsp of lemon juice (increases the overall acidity)

1 tsp chili powder (for some added heat)

The most involved thing I had to do in making this salsa was to remove the skins from the tomatoes. This was accomplished by dunking them into boiling water for just a minute then fishing them out and placing them into a bowl of ice water. After they’ve cooled, the skin slips right off!

Next, I used a mini food processor to dice up half the tomatoes and all the celery, onion, garlic and banana pepper. (The other half of the tomatoes were roughly chopped up to give some body to the salsa). This mixture went into a pot, to which I added the rest of the ingredients. Finally, everything was heated to a very low simmer for about 30 minutes to kill any bacteria and to render the natural enzymes inoperative (prevents spoilage). This mix was then poured immediately into the canning jars that had been sitting in a bath (along with the lids and tops) for about ten minutes. After filling each jar to within a quarter inch of the top, the lids were affixed with the bands to assure a good seal and then they were lowered into the boiling water for fifteen minutes (the time will vary according to your height above sea level). Once the time was up, I removed the two jars and placed them on a rack to cool overnight. That’s it! Not very complex after all.

How did the salsa taste? Well, I had some left over which sat in the fridge overnight. I tried it the next day with some tortilla chips and was astounded at how much better it tasted than the store bought stuff! I decided to label my jars ‘Salsa mei Balza’ as eating this stuff really takes some major cojones!