Sand Pail List 2012- Canning! (And a Recipe For Chipotle Salsa) (2024)

I am starting to sweat a little now when I look at our Sand Pail Listfor the summer. My son starts back to school on August 21st, so our summer days are all too quickly dwindling by. And even now that I can cross #2 off the list, we still have five more activities left to do (in less than 15 days!). I am starting to come to grips with the reality that we may just not get everything crossed off. But a few of them could be extended into the fall (like Kennywood, the Civil War site visits, and the 5K ;) ).

But wait. I did say that I can now cross #2 off the list- learning to can! :) I canned for the very first time this past week. It was a little small batch canning. Definitely nothing to survive the zombie apocalypse on, but I am proud of my two little jars nonetheless...

I bought one of those nifty Ball Home Canning Discovery Kits. Except it was not as nifty as I had hoped. Because it was missing it's Beginner Guide and Recipe Booklet. (Oh, so not cool...) So I did a little research on Google and MacGyver'ed my own small batch recipe for some salsa.

I wasn't willing to call Ball and wait for a new booklet when I had all of these beauties from my garden, the neighbor's garden, and my local farmers market sitting on my kitchen island...

I am proud to say that my salsa was about 98% all local!

I still had some chiles in adobo sauce cubes in the freezer (what are those, you ask? Click hereto find out. ;) ), so I decided to make a chipotle salsa to can. Now the following recipe is for a very small batch. It made one 12 ounce jar and one 8 ounce jar. Of course, you could just divide it up into two 10 ounce jars. Or double it and make twice as much.

I will warn you that this makes a medium-hot salsa. If you would like less heat, then I would leave out the jalapeno or just use one chiles in adobo cube instead of two.

What you will need:

8 medium tomatoes, chopped (you can seed them if you would like, but I just left the seeds in)

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 of a large green pepper, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped

1/4 cup apple juice

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/2 tsp salt

2 chiles in adobo cubes (or 2 tbsp of jarred chiles in adobo, pureed)

1 tbsp of sugar

After chopping the tomatoes, process half of them in a blender or food processor until mostly smooth. Pour into a large sauce pan. Add in the rest of the chopped tomatoes and all of the ingredients through the 1/2 tsp of salt.

Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Then add your 2 cubes of chiles in adobo, cover the pot, and boil for another 10 minutes. Add in the tablespoon of sugar and boil uncovered for a final 20 minutes.

Baby girl getting in on the canning action too. ;)

Since I was missing that handy beginner's guide, I used theIntro to Canning Guideon the Ball website to get me through the actual canning process. I could get into all the steps in this post, but their PDF was so simple and illustrative I would encourage you to just go ahead and click their link above. They are the experts after all, and I possibly couldn't do a better job explaining it than what they have on their site. It was pretty simple. Even for this canning novice. ;)

* I will say that I processed my jars for about 20 minutes in boiling water. The processing times can vary according to what you are canning and how much you are canning. 20 minutes was perfect for my two jars of salsa.

Tah-dah! The fruits of my labor.

This will be the first of many more canning ventures to come... :)

To see all our adventures from our Sand Pail List 2012,click here.