MamaBear's {Not so} Mild Salsa

My little garden helpers and I had quite a collection of tomatoes as of this morning. We planted eight tomato plants this year so we could have enough ripe at the same time for salsa making. I still haven't brought myself to make sauce...it's so depressing how little you get from all.those.tomatoes.





PapaBear and I love salsa and we love to share our salsa so by request I'm sharing my salsa recipe with you today! It will also be nice to have the recipe preserved for future canners like this little cutie who helped me in the kitchen much of the morning.
















MAMABEAR'S {NOT SO} MILD SALSA

30 medium sized tomatoes
2 green bell peppers
1 red bell pepper
1 yellow bell pepper
4 medium sized onions
1 cup vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1 cup chopped cilantro
3 cloves minced garlic
6 habanero peppers (I remove the insides & then chop them finely)

Add the habaneros last because you MUST USE GLOVES when handling them.

Prepare tomatoes by removing skins (soak in boiling water for 30 seconds and then transfer to ice water so the skins start to slip off)

Cook all tomatoes on medium high heat while you chop the remaining ingredients. Mash the tomatoes as they cook to break them up into smaller pieces. Then start adding the salt, sugar, and vinegar. After 45-60 minutes of cooking down the tomatoes, start to add the rest of the veggies.

Cook an additional 30-60 minutes depending on how thick you want the salsa to be. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will be. I love that while I'm doing all this prep, my dishwasher is sanitizing and heating up my jars. I also by this point have put my canners on the stove and have an extra pot of water heating to sterilize the rims of my jars.

I cut up a 1/2 gallon milk container to use as a funnel and use a ladle to grab one scoop of veggies from the bottom of the pot, one scoop of juice from the top, and one scoop from the side of the pot. By then the jar is filled one inch from the top. I pull four jars out of the dishwasher at at time so they stay hot and then continue to fill the rest of them until I have ten filled.

Wipe down the lip of the jar, place the lid on, and screw the rim on (but not too tight) I use pint sized jars because that's about how much salsa we'd eat in a week once a jar has been opened. I put the jars in a water bath for 15 minutes and then set them on my counter to cool for a day.

From 30 tomatoes we have ten pints of salsa - can't argue with that!

Do you have a favorite canning recipe?