My First Canning Experience

Well, I took the plunge today and made some salsa. After obtaining a bucket of tomatoes from my boss, I decided today was the day. Although he didn’t have any peppers, I purchased bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, carrots, and onions from the Wild Oats natural store, i.e. they’re the organic vegetables. Yum!

Wow, I only have to say that canning is a lot of hard work! LOL, I never realized how much was involved. And, I never really understood how long it takes for a 21 quart pot of water to start boiling. Geesh, that’s a lot of water. Needless to say, I hope the end result is worth the effort and expense. I can see now why canning has fallen out of favor, when it’s so easy to just go to the store and buy what you want. But, the homemade salsa that my boss’ wife makes is absolutely awesome, better than any store bought salsa I’ve ever had. She's given me several jars of salsa over the last couple of years. Heck, give a man a jar of salsa, and you feed him for a day, but teach a man how to make salsa, and you feed him for a lifetime.

I started off by blanching 20 small to medium size tomatoes. I’ve never blanched anything before, but that actually was pretty easy. You just drop the tomatoes (minus the stem) into a pot of boiling water for about 30 seconds, then dip them in ice cold water. The skins pell right off. Then, I chopped up 2 carrots, a bell pepper, 10 jalapeno peppers, and an onion. I added all of this to the blender (in various batches) and chopped to the consistency I felt comfortable with. Then, I added some pickling salt, pepper, and garlic salt, and cooked it all for about 30 minutes at a low boil. The house smelled yummy.

While the salsa mixture was cooking, I prepared 5 pint size jars by boiling them in the canning pot. I also boiled the lids and rings. Afterward, I ladled the salsa into the pint jars, attached the lids and rings, and canned the jars for 15 minutes in a boiling bath. Now, the jars are cooling, and tomorrow, I’m going to open one and try it.

All of the jars look great, as you can see above. I think it’s really going to taste great too. So, while I realized that there is a lot more involved in canning than I originally thought, actually, it’s not too bad, especially if you can assembly-line a lot of the work.

Hmm, what’s next? I've got some apples from the orchard that I need to make apple sauce out of, and eventually into apple butter. My wife has plans for canning spaghetti sauce too. Otherwise, that's about it. Salsa, apple sauce, and spaghetti sauce.