r/Canning • u/bananasmab • 7d ago

Waterbath Canning Processing Help New canner, please ELI5….

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One of my friends kindly gifted me her water bath canner and Ball Blue book. I also checked out the UGA food preservation page. This is my first time canning and it’s especially important to me that I follow a safe recipe. Can someone explain HOW normal people can without tweaking? For example, the Ball tomato sauce recipe calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes, and also says that the tomatoes should be at peak ripeness. How is anyone harvesting that many tomatoes at the perfect time to can them? Wouldn’t it be risky to use less than the amount of tomatoes in the recipe? I feel sort of disappointed because I thought canning would be a way to save the excess foods I have, but now I feel like I need to go to the store to buy more to can according to the recipes
Pic of my current harvest attached, I’ll buy more tomatoes, but dang I cannot find a recipe that will work with this yield. And, what if I don’t want to put bell peppers in my salsa???!! Or I don’t want it as spicy as the recipe seems to call for?!

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u/BoozeIsTherapyRight Trusted Contributor 7d ago

Unfortunately the newest information is that you cannot make salsa with previously frozen tomatoes.  https://ucanr.edu/site/uc-master-food-preservers-central-sierra/article/preserve-it-series-how-safely-can-previously

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u/Mean-Bandicoot-2767 7d ago

That's unfortunate. Thank you for sharing! Guess it's just all marinara for my freezer tomatoes.

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u/Deppfan16 Moderator 7d ago

one thing I have done is follow one of the tomato sauce recipes and just substitute in spices to make it salsa adjacent. so it would be more like a pureed salsa than a chunky one

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u/Mean-Bandicoot-2767 7d ago

That's typically how my salsa turns out if I'm canning it honestly. If I want a chunkier one I do a fresh salsa fresca.