I love this time of the year. Harvest time! Which also means canning time. For the past few years, we have planted a garden at our house, and I usually end up canning tomatoes and peaches. I’m excited to share my most favorite canned salsa recipe ever.

This Salsa recipe is tried and true. I took a few different recipes I liked and mixed them together and subtracted some things to get the mother of all yumminess in a bottle. Trust me when I say that this is the PERFECT salsa recipe for canning.

This recipe is for a mild-medium salsa. You can make it spicier by adding more jalapenos… or milder by seeding your peppers, or taking some out all together.

This recipe makes about 12-15 pints. If you don’t want that much salsa, or don’t have that many tomatoes and peppers on hand, go ahead and half it.

Canned Salsa Recipe

You’ll need:

35 medium tomatoes ( I like Roma Tomatoes because they are a lot meatier and less juicy)
4 jalapenos (with seeds)
3 green peppers (seeded)
2 red peppers (seeded)
3 onions (you can use red, yellow, whatever you have)
1 cup vinegar
2 teaspoons cumin powder (optional)
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon minced garlic
juice of 1 lime (optional)
handful of cilantro (optional)

Of course, all of these ingredients in this salsa recipe can be adjusted to your liking. For instance, my husband hates cilantro. I love it, so I still put it in. But if you are more sympathetic to your husband’s liking than I am, go ahead and get rid of it. You can also emit the sugar if you don’t want the sweetness that I SOO love.

1. Prepare Jars

Before you start mixing things up, get your jars out and start sanitizing them so they’ll be ready when you are. There are several ways to do this. I have found it’s easiest just to stick them in my dishwasher and push the sanitize button. Or if you don’t have a sanitize button, just run them through a really hot rinse cycle.

2. Chop Peppers

I use my food processor for a lot of the chopping. Mostly because once I touch a jalapeno, I can’t take my contacts out for a week! I am a wimp for spicey stuff, and I don’t want all that juice all over my hands. If you don’t have a food processor, try using the pulse setting on your blender, or just use an old fashioned knife and chop away!

Start by chopping your peppers. I don’t like my salsa very chunky, so I gave it a GOOD chopping to get rid of any of those pepper chunks. 

 You’re going to need a big bowl or pot to mix the salsa all up in.

 

3. Chop Onions

Next, chop the onions. I love the difference in color and flavor the red onion brings, so I used about half yellow onion, and half red onion. And I chopped it probably too much here. But it’s really up to you how chunky you want it.

Now stop for a minute and look at your pepper/onion mixture. Does it look a little runny? Mine did, and if you chop your veggies up a lot like I did, chances are yours will be runny too. So I just tipped my bowl a little and let some of the juice run off. This is already a pretty thin salsa, so if you don’t let the extra moisture run off, you’re going to end up with a REALLY runny salsa. No bueno.

4. Add Vinegar

After you have your peppers and onions mixed together and drained, add your vinegar. You need your vinegar because it adds the acid for canning. If you are using this as a fresh salsa, and not planning on canning it, I would recommend leaving the vinegar out. But if you’re canning it, keep the vinegar.

5. Add Spices

Mix all of your spices into your onion/ pepper mixture. (garlic powder, cumin powder (optional), salt, cayenne pepper, sugar, brown sugar, and minced garlic)

6. Add Lime Juice and Cilantro

Lime Juice and Cilantro are completely optional. I love the taste of these, and my husband doesn’t. Sometimes I’ll make 2 batches, and sometimes I just make him deal with it. Haha!

 

7. Chop Tomatoes

I used about 35 medium sized tomatoes. Romas are the best because they are really meaty and not as juicy. But use whatever you have. You can add more or less, depending on how spicey and how tomato-y you want it.

Take a knife and core the tomato. And then quarter the tomato.

 

Then you’ll need to chop the tomatoes. Again, I used my food processor. You can do them as chunky as you like. After all, it’s your salsa!

8. Strain Tomato Juice

A lot of canned salsa recipes I have used calls for simmering the tomatoes for hours and hours so the juice cooks off. I don’t like the taste of cooked salsa, because I feel like it tastes more like a chili sauce than fresh salsa. So, since we aren’t simmering our salsa for this recipe, we’ll need to strain some of the tomato juice off. If you are using heartier tomatoes, like Romas, you won’t have hardly any excess juice. But if you use plump, juicy tomatoes, you’ll need to get rid of that extra juice.

Take a strainer, and strain a lot of the juice out of your tomatoes. I actually caught the juice in a bowl and then bottled that as tomato juice. 

 9. Combine all ingredients

Add your tomatoes to your pepper mixture. Stir it all together and taste it. It should be pretty close to perfect, but you can adjust the heat by adding more tomatoes (for milder taste) or more jalapeno peppers (for hotter taste).

Here’s my tip. Taste your salsa with a tortilla chip, because 99% of the time, that’s how I eat my salsa. And the chips are already salty, so you won’t feel like you need to add more salt.  (But you can if you want!)

 

If you are making your salsa to eat fresh, stop here. If you are canning your salsa, go to the next step.

10. Fill Jars

Fill up your pint jars with the salsa. A jar funnel is absolutely necessary to keep your jars clean.

10. Process jars

Wipe off the mouth of the jar and put on your lid and ring.

Place your filled jars into a giant pot of boiling water. The water should be over the top of the jars by an inch or two. Boil for 45 minutes. I use this pot and it’s my very favorite ever! It has a rack so I can lift the jars out without burning my hands. I also have this canning kit, and it is SUPER helpful.  If you don’t want to buy the whole kit, you’ll at least want a jar lifter and a jar funnel.

 

 

 After processing, let your bottles sit on the counter at room temperature. Check your bottles after 24 hours and make sure they have sealed. You’ll know they’ve sealed if the top of the lid doesn’t pop up and down when you press on it.

And, enjoy this amazing canned salsa recipe!

This is the kind of stuff that your neighbors love if you share!

Don’t lose this salsa recipe like I did! You can pin this salsa recipe to your pinterest board, simply by hovering over the image above with your mouse and clicking on the “pin it” button that pops up. 

And if you have more produce, try my recipe for canning tomatoes and peaches

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Thanks for reading my tutorial for how to can salsa. If you liked this post, you might also like these canning posts:

How to Can tomatoes

 

How to can peaches