"Anny Middon" > wrote in message
...
> "Ted Mittelstaedt" > wrote in message
> ...
> >
> > Your going to have to correct me if your favorite salsa recipie is
> > different, but most of them I've seen spec tomato chunks. In short,
> > the finished product has significantly sized chunks of tomato in
> > it. ANY of these recipies should be pressure canned regardless
> > of any acidification that the recipie may specify or regardless of
> > any boiling water canning that is specified. Tomatos are
> > now known to be borderline low-acid, and the problem is that
> > in a recipie where they survive intact, you can have regions within
> > the tomato chunk that the acidification hasn't penetrated.
> >
>
> I'm going to disagree with you here, Ted. There are salsa recipes that
are
> safe for BWB canning at the NCHFP website, some (most) of which call for
> chopped tomatoes. I can't imagine those folks would leave any recipes up
at
> their site if they weren't sure they were safe.
>

I did not want to get into this but I see that I will have to. The
following
tomato varieties are known to be low acid: Ace, Ace 55VF, Beefmaster Hybrid,
Big Early Hybrid, Big Girl, Big Set, Burpee VF Hybrid, Cal Ace, Delicious,
Fireball, Garden State, Royal Chico, and San Marzano. There are others
as well. The majority of the more traditional home-garden raised tomatos
are not low acid, however.

The USDA recommends pressure canning for tomato products. Their
published recipies ALSO recommend acidification of tomato products
EVEN IF pressure canned. See the following:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publication...n_guide_03.pdf

"...Recommendation: Use of a pressure canner will result in a higher
quality and more nutritious canned tomato products..."

Note that the USDA guide does not recommend -against- BWB
canning of tomato products (like Salsa). They merely recommend
pressure canning instead of BWB canning of tomato products.

In other words, they are going to wait until the jury is in, you might
say.

The entire guide is up he

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publication...ions_usda.html

> Think of the tomatoes in salsa as being similar to the cucumber chunks or
> slices in pickles. One-day recipes for pickles call for a significant
> amount of vinegar. So do safe for BWB salsas.

USDA recommends citric acid or lemon juice specifically, instead of
vinegar, because of taste.

The NCHFP site does have a specific blurb about Salsa, they explicitly
exclude low-acid pressure-canned Salsa recipies from their list, and
they also mention that there are other ingredients that must be tested.
Basically they are saying that if your going to go the acidification route,
then while you can reduce Ph with adding acid, not all ingredients are
permeable to the acid that you add, that is why they recommend against
any Salsa recipies they haven't tested the ingredients list on.

Personally I don't understand what the fuss is all about. Pressure canners
are cheap and easy to operate, I have 2 of them both of which cost
less than $10 from Goodwill. (granted, I kept an eye out for them and
it took a while before they showed up) If you pressure can your Salsa
you can use whatever recipie you like, acid or no acid, just as long as
you pressure can it for the time called for, for the longest time ingredient
in it.

Ted