I grow a large garden every year but, never large enough to fulfill all of my canning needs, so off to our local farmers market I go. August is an amazing month at the farmers market, everything is available in bulk, at a great price. 25 lbs of tomatoes go for $14, $20 for 25lbs of tomatillos; peaches, berries and more are all available, all local, just picked summer bounty. There are so many good deals that I have a hard time not buying everything at once.
One of my canning goals for 2018 is to can food that we will actually eat. I used to look at vegetables in my garden and say, “what should I do with these, I know, can them”? Well, often those canned items were not something my family would generally use or eat, and I would feed them to the chickens after a year or two. And as most of you know there is a large amount of time and effort invested in canning so wasting something that that time intensive makes me excessively grumpy. After canning this way and wasting food, time, and energy for several years it was definitely time for a change.
This year I took a hard look at what we buy from the store and I am trying to can and make those commonly used items. Salsa Verde is one thing that my family really enjoys, often we buy the big liter of Herdez Verde that you can buy in any grocery store. Last year I made Salsa Verde and it was gone in two weeks and then, of course, I lost the recipe I used. This year I made it in 5 lbs batches until I hit the perfect recipe.
Changing recipes in water bath canning is tricky, some things you can change as much as you would like such as dry seasonings but amounts of non-acidic vegetables such a peppers cilantro and onions are a no-no. You need to maintain a proper acid level for water bath canning which is why there is a large amount of lime juice (that and it’s just yummy). So every time I changed this recipe I ran it by our extension office. Good thing that the woman who works there is a friend of mine and an avid canner because I called a lot in 3 days.
Salsa Verde
Ingredients
- 5 lbs Tomatillos husked and cleaned
- 5 medium Jalepenos cut in half- remove seeds for mild salsa
- 3 medium White Onions cut into 1/4s
- 8 cloves Garlic peeled
- 3 cups Chopped Cilantro finely chopped
- 1 cup Lime Juice
- 4.5 tsp Sea Salt
- 1 tbs Cumin
Instructions
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Place tomatillos, peppers, onion, and garlic on a cookie sheet in a single layer.
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Place under broiler for 10 minutes or until the veggies are blackened on top and soft. stay by your oven, you do not want the tomatillos to be wrinkled and overcooked just blacked and slightly soft.
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Place cooked veggie mix in a stockpot and use an immersion blender to blend coarsely.
Alternately you can use a regular blender for this part, coarsely blend the veggies not puree.
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Add salt, cumin and lime juice, stir well.
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Heat to a simmer and turn off the burner.
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Add chopped cilantro and stir.
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The Verde Salsa is ready for canning. I canned my salsa in pint jars for 20 minutes in a water bath.
Recipe Notes
This is a mild Salsa Verde, if you want to make it hotter substitute the jalapenos for a hotter type of pepper instead, such as Serrano peppers.
