Salsa Verde (Green Tomato Salsa) - and one small (big?) lesson learned

With the Cold weather coming, I cleared the Tomato patch out of the garden, and ended up with a fair quantity of green tomatoes. I've never used green tomatoes before. I was going to try fired green tomatoes, a couple years ago, but procrastinated until the tomatoes rotted. So this year, I had a friend who made salsa verde, using green tomatoes instead of tomatillos (I've never made salsa verde of any kind, but his was tasty, so I thought I'd give it a go. As I often do, I looked around at a few recipes, then kind of did my own thing. It is pretty darn delicious!

I don't know, maybe this is just me, but I find the "waste" bowl to be rather beautiful...

That will go to the copost pile to become part of next years vegetables! But I had to take a pic, because it is.... a natural work of art?

The jalapenoes came from the freezer, from last years garden, the habaneros were pretty tiny - one was ripe, one was half-ripe and the last one was just barely starting to ripen (It's what I had on the plant. Have to start that one earlier next year).


Salsa Verde

36 cups cored, rough-chopped green tomatoes
10 large jalapeno peppers
3 small habaneros
8 cups chopped red onion
1 head garlic
1 bunch cilantro, finely chopped
1 1/2 cups lime juice (fresh squeezed plus the pulp)

3 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin

2 Tbsp dried oregano

2 Tbsp salt
1 Tbsp black pepper


Run the tomatoes, peppers, onion and garlic through a food processor and add to a large pot.
Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a slow boil. Simmer for 15 minutes. I got size quarts out of this.

Of course then I went to look up processing info, and found that Salsa shouldn't be processed in quart jars, which is what I had available, and therefore filled and loaded in the canner before I went looking for processing times. Additionally, they are rather iffy on making up your own recipes and canning (at least water bath) as salsa is a mix of acid and non-acid ingredients, thus may not be safe for water bath canning. I've got 6 quarts of questionably processed salsa verde now. Ooops. I guess I could get some ph test strips and get at least a rough guess on approximate safety.

Guess I will be eating lots of green salsa this week. Salsa anyone?