Fire Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

It occurred to me that in my last post I gave a small glimpse of what I had canned this year, but never gave out a recipe!  I got this recipe online, but for the life of my can't find it again. Glad I saved it.  It's not too spicy and a good depth of flavor, especially after is sits in the jars for a little bit.  We had eight jars this year, and most of them are gone already.  Clearly a family favorite, and worth sharing.

Fire Roasted Tomato Salsa Recipe

Ingredients

5 lbs paste tomatoes, preferably from your garden or local farmers market

2 lb mix hot & sweet peppers (adjust ratio to suit your taste)

1 lb mixed white onions with 1 head garlic (not to exceed 1 lb total)

1 cup apple cider or white vinegar (must be 5 percent acidity)

1 tbsp salt

The only rule is that you DO NOT CHANGE THE RATIO of tomatoes, peppers, onions/garlic and vinegar.

This keeps it safe for canning!

It being fire roasted tomato salsa, we must fire up the grill to give these veggies some fire roasting.  You can see a few of mix of peppers that I used.  Some jalapenos and poblanos for spice, as well as some green peppers.  I want to experiment with different ratios next year to make a spicier salsa.

After the fire roasting, I pulled off the charred skins of the peppers, and cored my tomatoes.  Also removed the skins from the onions and garlic (In the future I would probably cut the onion in half for better fire roasting).



Re-weigh all your ingredients again make sure the ratios didn't change, and it's safe for canning. Add some raw ingredients if necessary to make your ratios work.

Here's were I deviated from the recipe a little bit. It says to put all the ingredients into a food processor to get desired consistency.  I decided I wanted to use my new immersion blender to accomplish this step (I would make my chunks a little smaller in the future as well).  Added the vinegar and salt to the pot, and brought it to a boil.

After I immersioned it (is that a word?), this was the look and consistency I was going after.  I lowered the heat and simmered it for 10 minutes. 

While the salsa was simmering, I prepared my hot water bath.  I heated my pint size jars and lids, I ladled the hot salsa into my prepared jars, leaving 1/2" head space.  Cleaned the rims and covered the jars with the hot two piece lids.  I then processed them in the canner for 15 minutes at a full rolling boil.

This recipe created 8 pint jars for me, the recipe said it would make between 6-7.  After it cooled we opened one right away, and found it to be sweeter that we thought it would be (hence the experimentation with the hot peppers), but after is was jarred for awhile we opened another to find the sweetness was mellowed, and it had a mild spicy flavor.




This was a great recipe for this first time salsa maker, and I look forward to tweaking it in the future for a more spicy flavor.