Our Home Made Picante Salsa – A Summer Harvest In Every Jar

We eat a ton of salsa and picante in our household.   Now let me first start by saying you can find a million explanations on the web for the difference between salsa and picante – but in a nutshell, salsa is simply the chunkier version of that great chip dip made up of a base of  tomatoes, onion, peppers – while picante is the smoother blended version of the same ingredients.  Picante is usually regarded to be a hotter version – but I have eaten both mild and hot versions of both – so that explanation always confused me.

Picante is a great way to utilize all those fresh tomatoes from the garden!

The simple fact is  -  we love them both! In fact – everyone in the house loves them both – and we go through a lot of it!  Although nothing beats that fresh “made from the garden salsa” – we have always been a little disappointed in what happens to that great fresh taste once it’s canned. So last summer, we began to experiment with different recipes to see what we could create that would taste the same fresh or canned – and came up with this picante recipe.

I noticed yesterday as I reached for a jar that we only have 7 on the canning shelf left –  so I think will be increasing the picante canning a little more this summer!

Here is both the simple fresh recipe – and our canning recipe for our version of picante salsa

The Ingredients :

8 peeled medium tomatoes.  A paste variety is the best – (roma, etc.)

2 Green Peppers  ( we also use a few of the cajun belle peppers in ours to add extra flavor)

1 to 2 jalapeno’s with seeds (if you want mild – skip the jalapeno’s)

1 large Vidalia onion

1/4 cup of chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar

1 teaspoon of pepper

1/8 cup of lime juice

1 ½ teaspoons of garlic salt

3 garlic cloves

Fresh: Simple place all of your ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth in texture and then refrigerate.  Garnish with a little bit of finely chopped cilantro and onion for an added extra  Fresh picante will keep for around a week or so in the refrigerator.

To Can: The above recipe will make around 2 to 3 half pint jars  - so we usually just multiply the ingredients x4 to can a dozen at a time.  Simply process the ingredients the same way and add to a large pot.  Bring to  a very slow boil and let simmer for an hour.  Then simply jar up and stick in your pressure canner for 15 minutes – or water bath for 40 minutes – and you have access to home-made year round picante salsa!