Salsa 2020

This weekend we picked tomatoes. Kate has been the curator of the garden since we planted it together so she was pretty excited to go out there and pick. I was only planning on picking enough to make pizza sauce (the pantry is out) but we ended up with loads, and I ended up in the kitchen all day doing pizza sauce and salsa.

I have a basic salsa recipe that has been tweaked a couple of times. It all depends on how many tomatoes you have. You want to keep the proportions somewhat similar... so essentially I am posting this year's recipe in an attempt to not do all the math again, should I ever have the same amount of tomatoes to start with! Got to save it somewhere.

I once spent a tedious afternoon working out that you need about 1/4 cup of acid (lemon juice, vinegar) per quart of tomatoes to make sure that it will can safely. Every time I make this I kick myself that I haven't yet bought any PH test strips to make sure... but I'm fairly confident that this is good!

Starting with 18lbs of tomatoes, which works out to 12lbs peeled and skinned, which works out to 5 3/4 quarts:

1 large red onion (4 cups)
1 large yellow onion (3 cups)
5 green bell peppers (4 1/2 cups)
8 jalapeños (2 cups)
3 serranos (1/2 cup)
1 green chili (1/2 cup)
4 6oz cans tomato paste
4 tbsp garlic powder
3 tbsp salt
2 tbsp cayenne pepper
3 tsp cumin
1/2 cup brown sugar (could probably get away with 1/3 actually)
3 tbsp fresh cilantro
1 3/4 cups lemon juice
1 cup white wine vinegar

It's not as hot as I was expecting. In fact it's been described as 'mild with a kick'. But it's still pretty good. I need to step up my jalapeño game I think, or find a fiery pepper or two to throw in there!