I Love the Smell of Salsa in the Morning

This past week I've been canning salsa like crazy. We ran out of our last jar of home canned salsa sometime in March and really, nothing we've bought since then has measured up in any way, shape, or form. We'd be open to suggestions--as of yet we've found nothing we like as much as our own canned salsa.

All these recipes can be found in the Ball® Complete Book to Home Preserving. Here are the 3 recipes I used for these batches.



Carrot Pepper Salsa (left), pg. 211

It appears this salsa will have a more mild flavor based on the recipe. This is my first year to try this one. We'll see how it goes. My kids think it is CRAZY to put carrots into a salsa, but I keep reminding them that you don't know if you'll like it unless you try it. It could be our new favorite, who knows. This recipe had you cook down the salsa for an hour, and even though I did that I still ended up with more jars than they said it would yield.

Note: I did try a bit that was leftover in the pan and it has a sweet taste to it--the brown sugar in it--but I liked it.

Jalapeño Salsa (middle), pg. 209

This recipe can also be found in the Ball Blue Book.

This is the recipe that I use most often--it has some serious KICK!! which is the way the majority of us like it. Equal ratio of tomatoes to jalapeños. Oh yeah! Normally when I double the recipe I do not double the jalapeños, however. Instead I double it by going 1/2 jalapeños and 1/2 green peppers. (i.e. 3 c. each instead of 6 c. jalapeños.)

Fresh Vegetable Salsa (right), pg. 203

I'm guessing that this one will be a middle of the road salsa as far as the "kick" factor goes. This one you cook down for 30 minutes before canning. Also my first year to try this recipe.

The book recommends: For optimum flavor let your jars sit 3-4 weeks before opening them to allow the salsa flavors to "mellow and blend".

O.K. I don't know if we can realistically wait that long....but, I guess we'll eat this fresh salsa in the meantime.