Canned Salsa Recipe

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Everyone has “the best salsa.” How many times have you heard someone say it or read it online? Well, I’m not claiming to have the absolute best salsa but we really enjoy it. We also use a different recipe for canning than we do for fresh. Which does seem a little odd but you’ll find that canning salsa will change the flavor of it. In fact, there are some people who don’t like canned salsa because of the texture and taste of it. We’ve enjoyed this canned salsa recipe for years and make at least a few batches of it per year. 

Cooking Salsa

The important part of canning salsa is that it needs to be cooked. This can be done in a couple of ways. You can get all of your ingredients processed and cook them before putting them in jars. The other way, which is what we do, is to cook them in the water bath. The difference is going to be the processing time in the water bath. If you cook it beforehand, you’ll have a short processing time. We don’t do this, so I can’t quote that time. However, because we don’t cook it ahead of time our water bath processing time is 40 minutes. 

Canned Salsa Recipe Ingredients

• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 cups green peppers
• 6 cups roma tomatoes (15-20 tomatoes)
• ¾ cup onion
• 1 cup hot peppers
• 1 tsp dried oregano (or 1 Tbsp of fresh oregano)
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 1 cup & 1 Tbsp vinegar
• 6 oz can of tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp sugar (optional)
• ½ tsp cilantro (optional)

Directions

Process all ingredients except vinegar, paste, and spices in a food processor. We love the Ninja food processor. *See the note about peppers below.

Place all ingredients in a large pot or bowl. 

Add paste, vinegar, and spices. Mix well.

Pour into sterilized jars and add the lids.

Process in the water bath for 40 minutes (pints and quarts). 

They may come out separated, this is totally normal. Give them a good shake before using or putting them away and they’ll be perfect.

Processing Peppers

To be clear, the hottest peppers that we use are jalapenos. No one in our family really enjoys salsa that is very hot, we prefer a mild version. On that note, this is going to produce a pretty mild salsa but will depend on how you process your peppers.

When we process the peppers we choose to remove the seeds from the pepper and only grind up the outside portion of the pepper. This is the portion of the pepper that isn’t very hot. The seeds tend to hold the heat (from what we’ve found). If we want a hotter batch we will do a few peppers with the seeds left in. If you want a very hot batch I’d leave the seeds in all of your jalapenos and process them.

Of course, you can always opt for hotter peppers as well. We don’t grow them and we don’t have any interest it in. I assume if you want hotter peppers, you’ll know what you want to use!

In Conclusion: Canned Salsa Recipe

I won’t tell you that this is the best canned salsa but I will tell you that we really enjoy it. We’ve tried other salsa recipes before but this is the one that we ultimately settled on. It’s a pleasure for us to enjoy this much garden goodness all throughout the year. I especially love salsa because it combines so many different veggies and tends to hold a brighter color even after canning. In the midst of all of the tomato sauce, be sure to add in a batch of salsa. We hope you enjoy this canned salsa recipe for years to come just like we do!

What is your favorite use for salsa? Of course, I love the traditional chips and salsa. Beyond that though, I personally love to add salsa as a dressing on salad and/or make some salsa chicken. Salsa chicken is the easiest recipe in the crockpot and helps make a super easy dinner.