My Mom's Salsa

Joe eats alot of salsa. ALOT of salsa. So part 2 of our canning day was making my mom's salsa. We bought all of our ingredients at the farmers market and got some fantastic deals because we went closer to the end of the day. We got about 100 tomatoes for $5!!

My biggest recommendation with this recipe is to make it in smaller batches. We didn't do this and well it appears that the tomatoes "ate" all the peppers that we added in. Seriously, we could not find any of them. Also the recipe turned out runnier than we would like because we were trying to cook such a massive batch. When I retry this recipe next year I will follow the below quantities and make more batches rather than one big one.

Okay and now a warning. This recipe calls for jalapeno peppers. I seeded and chopped 10 of these and while I felt fine afterwards several hours later I was in the worst pain I have ever experienced. This continued for 24 hours. The only way I could sleep was with my hands in buckets of ice water. So wear gloves when you are de-seeding the jalapeno's. There are lots of "remedies" (buttermilk, sourcream, aloe, nail polish remover, lime juice, baking soda) out there but none of them worked for me.

Ingredients
8 cups peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes
1 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons pickling salt
2 cups diced white onion
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1/2 cup tomato paste
1 cup diced pepper (red is best but you could use any colour you want)
4 tablespoons orange juice
5 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced
2 teaspoons sugar

1. Fill the sink with boiling hot water and place the tomatoes into it. Allow them to sit for 10 minutes. Remove and begin to peel off the skin with a knife.
2. Cut in half and remove the seeds.
3. Dice the tomatoes and add to a large pot.
4. Fill the sink with boiling hot water and fill each jar with hot water and place into the sink. Allow jars to sit in the sink for at least 5 minutes.
5. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add in the jar lids.
6. Dice the pepper, jalapeno's and onion and add to the tomatoes.
7. Chop the cilantro and add to the tomatoes.
8. Add in the vinegar, pickling salt, orange juice and sugar. Bring to a boil for 1/2 hour.
9. Add the tomato paste and cook for 2 minutes.
10. Remove a jar from the sink and ladle the hot salsa into it, filling it to the top.
11. Remove a lid from the boiling water and secure the jar shut.
12. Store in a cool place (I put ours in the basement).