Canning salsa
Last year’s salsa recipe came straight from the Ball Canning book, a classic. It was great, but this year, I found myself searching online for more unique salsa recipes and stumbled onto a blog, Seasonal Ontario Food, with a step-by-step recipe for salsa. So what? Well, the author, “Ferdzy” wrote, “. . . in my opinion, if there is vinegar in a salsa, it isn’t salsa anymore, it’s something else. This recipe calls for lime juice instead, which is a traditional ingredient for salsa.”
That was enough of a challenge for me to decide this would be the salsa recipe for this year. If the purists use lime juice, then why would I have thought vinegar was adequate?
We have some Anaheim peppers in the garden, so I thought they would do the trick. I mixed in some Habaneros, too. I didn’t learn until long after the 13 jars were complete that Anaheim peppers are fairly low on the Scoville Scale (I didn’t learn about the Scoville Scale, actually, until tonight.) The salsa is much milder than I would have hoped, but the taste is still terrific. I like that it has a freshness missing in last year’s salsa.
It helps to read the recipe thoroughly, though. This is one of my special challenges—I skim everything. The notation: “8 to 12 hours—2.5 to 3 hours working” was very accurate. It took me most of 24 hours to get it done. Didn’t estimate the right amount of lime juice, so I had to make a second trip to the store, and I had a horrible allergic reaction to cutting up the onions and peppers even though I wore gloves! I did! Had to abandon the task, shower, and rest until my nose recovered.
For all of these complaints, if you are up for canning salsa, and you have a FULL day, try this recipe. Next year, I will use the same recipe with slightly more spicy peppers.
