Green Tomato Hot Sauce for Canning

The hot sauce and the salsa are the same recipe, just processed differently.

I have a lot of green tomatoes, harvested in advance of the freeze that's coming. The larger ones are on the windowsill to slowly ripen over the next couple of months. Some are reserved for Josh's green tomato mincemeat, and some have been made into Fish House Green Tomato Pickles (for the recipe, go to my garden blog).

Green tomatoes with a few ripe cherry tomatoes.

Green tomatoes can be used in salsa recipes. They're more acidic (a good thing when you're canning) than ripe tomatoes, and they still have a tomatoey flavor. So the base of this recipe is green tomatoes, with a lot of hot peppers. I used a variety of peppers, including scorpion, yellow bhut jalokia, jalapeno, cayenne and seranno, plus some sweet New Mexico peppers. I divided the recipe in half, after cooking, and processed some into hot sauce and kept the rest for green tomato salsa. Here's the recipe.

I used a variety of hot pepper varieties in this recipe.

Green Tomato Hot Sauce and Salsa

2 1/2 pounds green tomatoes, quartered
2 yellow onions, cut up
Mixed hot peppers, seeded (if you wish), cut up to make about 1 cup or more
2 large red bell peppers or 1 large New Mexico sweet pepper
6 cloves garlic
1 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice of 3 limes
2 cups apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3 sprigs Mexican oregano (or 1 teaspoon dried regular oregano)
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons dry, ground cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar

Combine ingredients in batches in the food processor, coarsely chopping.

Don't over-process the ingredients.

Pour the chopped ingredients into a cooking pan and bring to a simmer, cooking for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Hot jars, ready for filling. They'll go back into the pan for processing.

Ladle into hot, sterilized canning jars, attach hot, new jar rings and flats and tighten moderately. Lower into a hot water bath with at least 1/2 inch of water over the tops. Bring to a boil and begin timing. Let slowly boil for 15 minutes. Remove from hot water bath and cool on dry towels.

I divided this recipe in half when it was cooked and ready to can. I put half of the salsa into a blender and blended to a sauce and canned that. The remaining batch I canned as salsa. Both have the same flavor and heat, but I'll use them differently. Sauce goes on eggs, salsa goes on burritos and everything else.

Hot sauce and salsa, great way to use up green tomatoes.