I understand this is probably a frequently asked question but I have tried looking up the answer myself and can’t find a consistent answer ðŸ˜
Yesterday I made my first attempt at canning. I bought a pressure canner and was really excited to try it out.
I made the spaghetti sauce (with meat ) recipe in the Presto 16 qt pressure canner instruction booklet. I followed the recipe to the letter. I have attached a picture of the recipe for reference.
The instruction booklet stressed the importance of adding lemon juice to recipes with tomato. I noticed that every tomato recipe in this section of the book EXCEPT the spaghetti sauce recipe called for lemon juice. So I had some brand new bottled lemon juice on standby to add just to be safe, but ultimately forgot because it wasn’t written down.
I used Roma tomatoes.
So my question is did I mess up, or is this safe to eat/ shelf stable?
by Sea_Bug7866
4 Comments
If all the other recipes stated that the lemon juice should be added I would assume that this recipe didn’t require it. If you’re not comfortable with not adding acid then I would follow the USDA tomato acidification guidelines because they do it per jar. Then reprocess with new lids for the recommended time.
You did nothing wrong.
One concept to understand is that most tomato recipes are designed for boiling water processing, which requires that the food be high-acid for botulism prevention, as the bacterial spores remain in the food. Because tomatoes are a borderline food, lemon juice or citric acid are used to acidify them. The spaghetti sauce recipe (with or without meat) is one of those rarer tomato recipes that does not rely on acid as the safety mechanism. It is a pressure canner recipe, meaning that it outright destroys botulism spores. You do not need lemon juice in such a case.
The context is a little bit hard to see from the Presto book alone. The recipe comes from NCHFP: https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_03/spaghetti_sauce_meat.html. If you look at the processing time table, you can see that there are no boiling water processing instructions. This confirms that the main safety mechanism is spore destruction. Compare it to something like tomato sauce, which does have boiling water instructions: https://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can_03/tomato_sauce.html. Additional acid is needed.
With the meat, low acid vegetables, and no acid called for, and only pressure canning instructions, you are treating it as a low acid product anyway.
As long as the sauce is below 4.6ph you should be fine. Use a Ph meter. they are 10$ on amazon.
But you need a new recipe. A spaghetti sauce with green pepper in it? only 1 onion and 5 cloves of garlic per 30lbs of tomatos, and no basil? this isnt spaghetti sauce.