Easy Southwest Salsa Recipe! Learn how to make the best healthy, homemade salsa!

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Thanks for watching!
Steph and Chris

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Hey guys, welcome back to Pantry Living. My name is Stephanie in case you’re new to the channel and didn’t already know that. Today is a big day. After quite the hiatus, we’re going to get back into some cooking. Canning in particular. You can see here we’ve got the big Le Valley pot out to make a nice big batch of salsa. And I’ve got my water bath canning gear all ready to go. My jars are all ready to go in the oven. We are prepped. So, this is going to be a really good efficient video. But before I get to that, I know what you’re wondering, right? Am I rich? Did I win on those scratch tickets? I bet you can guess the answer. Five bucks. That’s it. You remember they were on the shelf back here that we just finished organizing and cleaning up? And oh my gosh, doesn’t it look good? Look it. It’s only been one day. Give it time. Give it time. So today we are focusing on a recipe from one of my favorite canning books, small batch preserving, and we’re going to be making Southwest Salsa. This one was new to us last year. I do think I actually featured it in the Every Bit Counts last year because we were here and did do that in 2024, but I didn’t do it as its own video. So, here we go with the actual single solo focused video on Southwest Salsa. You can see here I’ve got all the ingredients out. I am doing a four times batch for this, but I will share the ingredients for a single batch and you can vamp it up however you would like. Uh we’re going to go through that as we go here and get it in the pot because realistically it all just gets bunged in there and it’s got to cook for 30 minutes and then we can it. It’s really that easy. So let’s get started. Recipe calls for basically 1 kg or 2.2 lbs of tomatoes per batch. As you can see, that’s a big amount of tomatoes right there. That actually is um 12 lbs in there. I know quadrupling the batch is 8 pounds, not 12, but some of these are starting to get a little icky. So, I am not anticipating that I’m going to be using all of these. Plus, they still have the cores in them. So, you’ve got a lot of weight coming out for that. So, I usually operate on the fact that 12 lbs usually is going to work down to about 8 lbs of chopped up tomatoes. So, that’s the one thing I will say is it’s saying 1 kg of chopped up tomatoes. It’s also saying peeled, and I’m not going to be doing that. I leave that to your discretion, but you could also blanch these a little bit and take the skins off. I didn’t do that last year. It was perfectly fine. My family doesn’t mind skins in the salsa. Gives it a little bit of texture. So, we’re leaving them in. It also speeds up the process a little bit, which all of you know I do like that. So, I’ve already got these washed. I’m just going to get them cred now and cut off any of those yucky bits. The chickens will love them. And then we’re going to run it through my food processor here just to dice it up. I don’t want to overdo it because it is going to get cooked down a little bit for those 30 minutes. So that’s what I’m going to do. Then I’m going to bring you back and we’re going to go through all the rest of the ingredients that are going in this once I have the tomatoes chopped up and in the pot. Okay. So we’ve got what I’m comfortable with so far processed up. That was our off cuts. You know, the bits that didn’t make the grade. And I will be honest, I did not put them all in because I wasn’t having to cut off as much as I thought. And since I only needed, you know, eight and a half to nine pounds, I thought, eh. So, I weighed these and it was not quite 2 lb off that 12. Plus, I had all those little scrappity bits. So, we’re going to play it by ear. I can always add more in if I think it looks too thick once we get the onions and everything else in. So, speaking of onions, I got them ready at the same time here. That’s a lie. I got them ready beforehand because I was so short on onions and they were in really rough shape. I wanted to make sure I had enough to do a whole batch. So, if you were doing a single batch, you would have been the 1 kg of tomatoes. They save basically four cups of chopped up tomatoes. One cup of onions. Of course, I’m going with four. And it went perfect. And next is our garlic. Now, even though we have harvested our 2024 garlic, and there will be some information on that coming soon, I am still trying to use up last year’s. I have this one, and I have one more like this in the fridge, the spare fridge, since our other fridge died. Um, that I’m trying to use up first before we move on to the new stuff. The rest of it we converted all into garlic powder, which is coming in that video. So, um, super pleased cuz this uses 12 cloves of garlic, which will almost be that whole container. Now, some of these, I mean, you can see some of these are pretty big pieces of garlic. I mean, they’re Let me put it in my hand. You know, that’s a pretty big piece of garlic. So, we might count those as two. We don’t want this to be too overpowering, but we’re going to put those in the food processor and grind them up. Chop them up as small as we can because we want them to be kind of like those little cubies. Uh you could cheat if you do not have homegrown garlic. Definitely get the stuff that’s already cubed up in the grocery store. Anyways, let’s get this processed in the pot. So, so far we have tomatoes, onions. We’re going to get the garlic, and then we move on to the fun stuff, which is the jalapenos, which they’re always killer to uh chop up. So, again, they’ll be in the food processor. Next thing to go in here is sweet red peppers. Whether you have like us Italian frying peppers or the bell peppers, it’s up to you. Basically, you want a half a cup chopped. So, I’m looking for two full cups all chopped up. Now, this is the one part that I don’t run through the food processor because getting these peppers to be nice kind of consistent little bit bigger chunks just gives you that chunky salsa feel even though you’ve kind of pureeed everything else up cuz you can bet those jalapenos are going to be pureeed up. So, we have our sweet bell peppers. But the one thing I am going to say, this recipe calls for two to four jalapenos per batch. Now, my jalapenos are bright red. I got them from my friend An. They were very, very ripe, so they’re going to be very, very spicy. So, I’m going with the lower number with two, which means I’m going to pop in an extra two smaller little sweet red peppers just to bulk it out because realistically it’s the same thing, just a different type of pepper. So, I’m going to cut those up in chunks as well at the same time here and get them in. And then really the only processing part we have left is grinding up all those jalapenos, which really isn’t that many. It’s two or eight in my case. All right, look. Got our two cups all ready to go there. And these are the ones that I chopped up to replace those extra jalapenos. So, super pleased. Definitely going to be a nice kind of chunky texture to it. That’s why I like to chop up the peppers because even as you heat them, they still hold their shape and that texture, which is what makes salsa awesome. So, we’re going to get these in the pot and then yikes. I have gloves. We’re going to put them on. I made jalapeno poppers last night and believe me these are spicy. So hopefully those eight is not going to be too much for our taste buds. Um other than James, none of us really love spicy spicy. So I think it’ll be okay though. So we’re going to get these peppers in. Chop up those jalapenos good and small so that we’re not biting into a big chunk. And then it’ll be just putting in all the spices and things like that. All right. So you can see what I mean there. That’s pretty finely chopped up for those jalapenos. They are fire engine red. It’s going to be a very, very red salsa. We’ll get them in and start this thing. I’ I’ve got it on low, but we’re going to turn it up now and get some heat and we’ll talk about the rest of the ingredients. All right. I’m going to read it out of the book so that I don’t screw up because I’m reading you a single batch, not the four times batch that I am doing at the moment. So, we’ve already got our onions, tomatoes, garlic, sweet pepper, and jalapeno peppers in there. Now, we’re going to move on. So, what you need is a half2 cup of red wine vinegar. Uh 1/4 cup of fresh cilantro. Now, I’m using dehydrated cilantro. So, um, it’s going I’m going to use a tablespoon per batch of the dried, 2 tbsp of orange juice, 1 tbsp of lime juice, 1 teaspoon each of sugar and pickling salt, and 1/4 cup of tomato paste. Now, the tomato paste doesn’t go in yet. We’re going to add that after it’s had its 30 minute boil. So, it’s already just starting to boil. So, this is going to be perfect because my red wine vinegar is going to set it back a little bit and then we’ll bring it up to temp and boil it up and then it will be jarring time. All right, so that is everything in here except for our tomato paste. Now, the idea of the 30 minutes is to cook it down. That um red wine vinegar definitely made it a bit runnier consistency. So, we’re going to let that cook down. Hopefully, it’ll thicken up. And then we add our tomato paste, which is that kind of final thickener. And away we go. So, while that’s happening, we’re going to sterilize our jars in the oven cuz this is just a water bath canning recipe and get our lid soaking in the hot water, which I already have them in my pot. Just haven’t turned it on yet. So, I’m organized, guys. All right, guys. So, we have actually been about 40 minutes. This ended up a little bit runnier than I had anticipated. So, to cook down, but I think, you know, we’re getting a good mound on the spoon. And I still haven’t put that paste in there. So, that’s our next step. We’re going to put in our tomato paste. 1/4 cup for you guys, a whole cup for me. And uh get that stirred around and bring it back to a boil for 2 minutes. I’m using my homemade tomato paste. That’s lovely. That should just kind of give it a little kick and thicken up a little tiny bit. This is older tomato paste. I now make it a lot thicker than this, but that was kind of one of my first times making it realistically. There we go. Stir that in. It’s going to go a nice darker red now. There we go. James already tried it on some nachos and said it was approved. So, now we’re going to get this back to a boil. 2 minutes. Our jars are ready. Our lids are ready. We’re going to can it up quick. I’ll turn this. I even have my uh water bath caner all ready to go with its hot water. So, this should be a relatively quick process to get canned up and in there. All right, there we go. We ended up with 10 jars inside the water bath caner and one extra jar plus a little tiny bit. So, 11 jars out of that recipe that I did, which was four times the batch. So, that sounds about right. Uh it was kind of thought that it would get two to three jars per batch. So, I think we’re sitting pretty good. Uh now that they’re in the water bath caner, that is 20 minutes. Whether you did 250 mil or 500, it’s still 20 minutes at that rolling boil once uh um it gets there. So don’t start counting till it’s boiling. Well, guys, as the cook, you have to do the taste test, right? And I have to admit, I’ve already done it. It’s really, really good. Really good. I love this salsa. It may actually pass. My charred salsa is my favorite recipe. I know it’s my family’s favorite recipe, but I still really liked my chard salsa. This one, second year now, it might be winning. And I don’t need to light up a barbecue to make it, which is also a nice plus. So, definitely make sure you give this one a try. We ended up, like I say, with those 11 jars. The one thing I will say, I did the eight jalapenos. Now, after taste testing it, I could have done more jalapenos. It actually isn’t that spicy. It’s a nice sweet spicy right now, which is nice, but I think I could have used a few more jalapenos. So, you know, make it how you’d think you’d want it the first time and adjust after that. But it’s a very super easy recipe and such a wonderful little snack whenever you just need that comfort food. That’s what nachos are to me. So, hope you enjoyed the video. Hope you try the recipe and stay tuned and we’ll see what we get up to

8 Comments

  1. Always a pleasure seeing your recipes, I have a box of green tomatoes and a freezer full of tomatoes that need canned up. I used almost every canning jar I own, I also had to shake down some jars from the fridge and cupboard knowing that I still have apples to do. I appreciate your company!! Great you are back friends!

  2. Girl, I laughed like crazy when you held those jalapeno peppers, and yelled, "Yikes!!" Your salsa looks incredible. I canned 6 quarts tomato sauce today. All my tomatoes are now all done.