Green Tomato Salsa

 The tomatoes have done wonderful this year. I have put up about 25-30 quarts of salsa and even dehydrated a bunch of them. With this weather coming in I knew I needed to get my green tomatoes off the vines and in the house. The tomatoes in the greenhouse are doing great and still putting on lots of fruit so I can just leave them alone.

There are several things you can do with green tomatoes. You can fry them up. You can wrap them in newspaper and let them ripen. But our favorite is green tomato salsa. The last couple of years I haven't had tomatoes, so no salsa. I knew that was what we would do with the green tomatoes this year. I ended up with 35 pounds of green tomatoes. As you can see some of them were starting to ripen, but I put them in the salsa anyway.

Several people have asked how I make green tomato salsa, so here are the basics. I don't really have a recipe. I just know what I want in it and of course I have to do some tasting along the way.

 

So here are all of my tomatoes in the sink where I wash them off and get them ready for the chopper.

After the tomatoes are washed off real good I cut them into cubes and cut out any bad spots. You don't really have to worry about the core. It all cooks down.

Now I fill up my Ninja and give them a good whirl. As I get them done I put them in a large bowl and then go back to cutting up more tomatoes.

After all of the tomatoes are cut up I start on the other ingredients.

 I had all kinds of peppers in the garden so I just picked them all and used a variety. There are jalapenos, banana, Italian, bell and habaneros. I didn't use the bell peppers because I wanted something that would stand out and look good. I also added a couple of ghost peppers to part of it. I also added about five onions, but forgot to take pictures of that. I give the onions a big chop and then run them through the Ninja just like the tomatoes.

Now it all goes into a huge pot and I add about 3/4 cup of salt, one cup of while distilled vinegar. I also added some garlic powder. I usually use fresh, but I was out. 

Now turn the burner on low and let it cook down. This part takes several hours. After it has cooked down taste it and see if you want to add anything to it. More peppers, onion, garlic or salt. Nice thing about this is you can adjust it to your taste.

 Here are some of my jars ready to go into the canner. I got 20 pints out of this batch. The jars on the top are some of the beautiful vintage Ball jars which are green. I thought the salsa would look great in these and I found them marked way down at Dillon's grocery store. Also, the salsa in the green jars is more of a medium heat. After I filled them I added a couple of ghost peppers in the rest of the salsa. This will be the HOT variety. The HOT is in the clear jars. Easy way to tell them apart.

Right now I am cycling jars in and out of the water bath canner. Seven pints are out. Seven more just went in. After it reaches a boil they will process for 20 minutes. 

So there you have it. Green tomato salsa.