Smoked Salsa
I'm always game to try new salsas, but it seems that most commercial varieties fall into 2 categories:
- Bland and tasteless.
- My-mouth-is-on-fire hot.
Until I found and modified this recipe, I'd never been happy with a homemade salsa recipe either, so I stuck with the commercial salsa.
Now I don't buy salsa, unless I need it, and I'm currently out of my homemade salsa.
As a good example, the photos below were from a double batch of salsa...one to eat, and one to freeze for later.
The one for the freezer never made it to the freezer...
You can use just about any type of tomatoes for this recipe, although I prefer Roma tomatoes, as they run a bit sweeter.
In this double batch, I used Roma for one, and Beefsteak for another. I preferred the Roma tomato salsa, but my wife preferred the one made with the Beefsteak tomatoes.
Ingredients
2 pounds Roma/vine tomatoes, cored and halved 1 small white onion, quartered 1 small red onion, quartered 2 large jalapeno peppers, halved and one pepper de-seeded 2 Serrano peppers, halved and one half of one pepper unseeded, remove the seeds from the rest 1 poblano pepper, halved 5 cloves of garlic on a little square of aluminum foil (I used minced garlic)
Place the above ingredients on a 180 degree smoker for 2 hours.
1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon adobo seasoning 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon white vinegar 1/4 cup lime juice (juice from 2 limes) 3 ounces tomato paste Large handful of cilantro
Optional: Gently squeeze the tops of the tomatoes, to remove the skins (they should remove easily). The prevents small pieces of tomato skin in the finished salsa.
Blend cilantro, lime juice, and white vinegar, then add the garlic and blend.
Add all peppers and 2 tomatoes, then blend (I've found that you need the juice from the tomatoes).
Add onions, then blend, then the tomatoes, sugar, salt, and adobo (in that order) and blend.
Just before all the ingredients are uniform in consistency, add the tomato paste, and blend.
Canning the salsa
The National Center for Home Food Preservation states that salsa can be canned using the water bath method if the pH of the finished salsa is less than 4.6.
Salsas typically are mixtures of acid and low-acid ingredients; they are an example of an acidified food and appropriate for boiling water canning if the final pH of all components is less than 4.6.
Using a just-calibrated pH meter, this salsa comes in at just under a pH of 4.0, so it can ben canned using the water bath method of canning.
Note: I tested 2 different batches, on 2 separate occasions, and the pH came in under 4.0 each time.
References
Reddit - Smoked Red Salsa, Again https://www.reddit.com/r/SalsaSnobs/comments/mwwmqk/smoked_red_salsa_again
National Center for Home Food Preservation - Burning Issue: Canning Your Own Salsa Recipe https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/salsa.html