I pretty much taught myself to can with two sources: Marisa McClellan’s blog Food in Jars (linked on the sidebar) and The Ball Blue Book.
McClellan recently released her second book, Preserving By the Pint: Quick Seasonal Canning for Small Spaces. Written with truly small batches in mind (think no more than two pints), the book is broken into seasons. Each recipe is both high flavor but fairly simple-there’s no three week long pickle recipes here.
And I love that. I have to be honest, I love this book. It fills a niche that I’ve been looking for-recipes that I can get through my canner in a morning before work, while actually being small batch. I’ve been frustrated since I started canning that even small batch salsa recipes make upwards of four pints of salsa.
The book, while being beginner friendly, is not entirely aimed at beginners in that if you want a book on how to make basic dill pickles or strawberry jam, you might not be happy with what you find in this book. However, McClellan still has you in mind-you’d just be happier with her first book Food in Jars (which I also own and cook out of).
McClellan also produced a gorgeous book. The actual book, and its lay out is lovely. I did buy the ebook (with my own funds, this is not a sponsored post) and find it a very easy book to navigate with my Paperwhite.
And yes, I squeed when I realized that McClellan had a truly small batch salsa recipe, which means I can make salsa with heirlooms and not blow my entire canning budget on tomatoes.
The Canning:
I was trying to can on a back injury which means I was moving a lot slower than normal. Add in doctor’s appointment and sick time and everything else, and you have a decided lack of motivation to want to can.
However I also had just over two pounds of Roma tomatoes staring me down in the face, slowly getting wrinkly and nasty. So I ended up making the salsa fridge style the night before and processing it the next day. Honestly? I may do all of my tomatoes that way from now on.
Notes:
-I’ll add a photo of the actual jars later.
-I did modify the recipe slightly. I love mint and peppers in my salsa. The original recipe calls for no herbs other than garlic and just onions. I used half of the called for onions and replaced the rest with bell pepper.
-The original recipe makes 4 half pint jars. I got a pint jar and a half pint. Remember that there’s a lot of factors that account for output including the water content of your produce.
-I overblended my tomatoes so this batch is a lot smoother than what I liked, but I left all of the other produce hand chopped because the tomatoes were too smooth.
-I added 50% more citric acid just to cover my bases with the mint and the bell pepper. It should be fine without it, but I wanted to be safe.
-I processed this batch for 20 minutes because I used a pint jar. Recipe is written for 15 minutes for half pints. Time was determined by comparison to recipes in the Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving.
Blender Salsa
1/8 tea dried mint
3/4 tea citric acid
2 table bottled lemon juice (recipe calls for lime, but I had lemon)
approx. 2 lbs roma tomatoes
2 tea kosher salt
1/4 cup each chopped onions and bell peppers
1 hot pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Place all into a blender and pulse till chopped, but not smooth.
Prep 4 half pint jars for canning (make sure you understand the basics of water bath canning).
Bring salsa to a boil, then simmer for 5 minutes.
Fill jars to within 1/2 inch of top.
Process for 15 minutes in a boiling water bath.
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