Canning Garden Fresh Hot Sauce

A SPECIAL NOTE ON CANNING TOMATOES:  There are many different varieties of tomatoes.  Many modern hybrid tomatoes have been bred to be low in acid.  For this reason many sources now recommend that tomatoes should be canned using a pressure canner rather than the water bath method.  I only raise the older non-hybrid, heirloom type tomatoes which have a high acid content.  I process them using the water bath method, and I have never had a problem.  You will have to use your own judgment as to what type of canning method to use; and if you are in any doubt, you should ere on the side of caution.

To make and can 4 to 5 pints of hot sauce you will need the following:

1 gallon of stemmed and sliced fresh tomatoes

1 medium onion coarsely chopped

8 fresh jalapeno peppers stemmed and coarsely chopped

4 teaspoons of pickling or non-iodized sea salt

1 teaspoon of granulated garlic

1 teaspoon of powered cumin

1 tablespoon of chili powder

1/8^th cup of distilled white vinegar

Equipment needed includes:

4 to 5 pint canning jars

4 to 5 canning lids and rings

A pot large enough to hold your upright canning jars with one inch of water above the tops of the jars

A smaller pot to sterilize lids and rings in

A large cook pot to prepare the hot sauce in

A long handle wooden spoon

A jar lifter

A canning funnel

A cup to pour hot sauce into the jars

Tongs to handle the hot lids and rings

A damp cloth to wipe the jar rims

Begin by placing your lidless jars in the large pot and covering with water until one inch above the jar tops.  I always do five jars even though this recipe usually just makes about 4 ½ pints.  The 5^th jar is to hold the left-over which I put in the refrigerator for immediate use.  Some times, for reasons only the canning gods can understand, I will end up with 5 full jars. Place the covered pot on your stove over high heat and bring the water to a rolling boil.  Boil jars for ten minutes to sterilize.  Reduce the heat to low to keep the jars hot.

Place lids and rings in your small pot and cover with water.  Set this jar on the stove but do not begin heating yet. 

To prepare your hot sauce begin with firm, unblemished, ripe tomatoes.  Slice the tomatoes in half.

Cut out the stem ends of the tomato removing most of the green where it intrudes down into the tomato.

Nip off the bloom end of the tomato.

Slice each half of the tomato into 3 to 6 pieces depending on size.  I do not remove the skin from the tomatoes.

 

For a single batch of 4 to 5 pints of hot sauce you will need one gallon of sliced tomatoes.

Peel and coarsely chop one medium onion.

Cut the stems off and coarsely chop eight fresh jalapeno peppers.

Place one quart of sliced tomatoes, one fourth of your chopped onion, and one fourth of your jalapenos in a blender.

Turn on blender.  You will probably have to use your wooden spoon to press the mixture down into the blender until the mixture turns over and starts to blend.  Be careful not to get the spoon down into the blades.  Blend for about 30 seconds.

Pour the blended mixture off into your large cook pot.

Process additional batches of tomatoes, onions, and jalapenos until you have used all of your vegetables.

Place the uncovered pot of blended mixture over high heat and bring to a boil.  Sir the mixture every 4 or 5 minutes. Drag your spoon across the bottom of the pot to keep the mixture from sticking and scorching.

As the mixture begin to boil the pink foam on top on the mixture will largely disappear.

Reduce the heat but make sure that the mixture continues to boil.  Set your timer for 25 minutes for a single batch or 40 minutes if you are preparing a double batch.  The purpose of the long cook time is to cook and sterilize the sauce and to reduce the moisture content and make the sauce thicker.

As the sauce boils add your salt, garlic, cumin, chili powder and white vinegar.

Continue stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot every 4 to 5 minutes.

During the last 15 minutes of cooking, turn the heat on under your lids and rings.  As soon as the lids and rings come to a boil, turn the heat off.

About five minutes before your hot sauce is done you can dip out a spoon full, blow it to cool, and sample it for flavor and (spice) hotness.  If it is not hot enough for your taste, you can add some cayenne pepper to bring up the heat.  You can also observe the thickness of the sauce at this time.  If it is too thin for you, you can extend the cooking time to drive a little more moisture out of the sauce.

When the sauce is cooked to your taste it is time to can it.

Remove the sterilized jars from the canner dumping about an inch of water from each jar back into the pot. 

Fill and apply lids to the jars one at a time.  Pour hot sauce in jar leaving ½ inch of head space at the top.

Wipe the jar rim with a damp cloth to clean it and insure a good seal.

Place a hot lid on the jar and immediately screw a ring firmly onto the jar.

If you don’t have enough hot sauce to fill the last jar, you can partially fill it, wait for it to cool, then put it in the refrigerator for immediate use.

When all of the jars are filled and sealed return them to the water bath canner, cover, and turn the heat to high.  Make sure that you have a least an inch of water covering the tops of the jars.

Bring the water to a full boil and process for 20 minutes.

When the jars have finished processing lift them, immediately, from the water bath and place them on the counter to cool.  The lids should ping down as the jars cool.  If a jar doesn’t ping, and the lid stays bowed up, then you don’t have a good seal on the jar, and it will spoil.  At this point you can either replace the lid and ring and reprocess, or you can put the jar in the refrigerator for immediate use.

Be sure to label and date jars before you put them in storage.  Be sure to check each jar before you open it to make sure that the lid is still bowed down and the seal is good.  Any jar whose lid is bowed up should be discarded immediately.

Canning Jalapenos

 The garden is in full production of jalapeno peppers, so its time to get some canning done.  I pickle my jalapenos so I can do my canning using the water-bath method rather than pressure canning.  To make six pints of pickled jalapenos you will need:

A one gallon freezer bag full of jalapenos, washed and dried

Six grape leaves

A large covered pot that is big enough to hold six pint jars completely covered with water

Six pint jars

Six canning lids and rings

A jar lifter

A canning funnel

A wooden chop stick or a thin knife

And ten cups of canning brine (ingredients below)

I always start my jars sterilizing first since this takes longer than any other part of the process.  To sterilize jars, fill them with water and place them in the pot, then fill the remainder of the pot with water until the jars have at least ½ inch of water over the tops.  Place the pot on the stove, cover, and turn the burner on high.  After the pot comes to a rolling boil let it boil for ten minutes then turn the heat off.  Keep covered.

Next I prepare the pickling brine.  To make the brine I use a medium large pot and pour in five cups of distilled white vinegar, five cups of water, and five tablespoons of canning salt.  Be sure to use canning salt, kosher salt, or pure sea salt.  Do not use iodized table salt.  To this mixture I add one teaspoon of mustard seed, one teaspoon of granulated garlic, and ¼ teaspoon of turmeric.  Cover this mixture and bring to a boil for 15 minutes.  This is actually a little more brine than you will need, but there’s nothing more frustrating than to run short of brine and have to make a new batch to finish up that last jar.

Place your lids and rings in a small pot and cover with water.  Heat until the water just starts to boil then turn the heat off.  I usually don’t turn the heat on under the lids and rings until about ten minutes before I’m going to use them.  It doesn’t take long for them to heat up, and I want them to be hot when I use them.

Now it’s time to prepare the jalapenos.  Always wear protective gloves when processing jalapenos to avoid burning your hands.  Don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth while processing. 

I cut off the stem end of the peppers and then split them in half.  If you don’t want them to be too hot you can remove the seeds and ribs, but it kind of defeats the purpose of jalapenos to do this.

 

When your jars have sterilized, use your jar lifter to take them out of the pot.  Pour about an inch or two of water from each jar back into the pot then discard the rest.  Recover the pot to retain as much heat as possible.

Line your jars up on the counter and stuff them as tightly as possible with the jalapeno slices.  Add one grape leaf to each jar as you are filling it with jalapenos.  The tannin in the grape leaves will keep the jalapenos from getting too mushy.

Pour hot brine in each jar until it is about ½ inch from the top rim.

Run your chop stick down the inside edge of the jar all the way to the bottom.  Do this three or four times around the inside of the jar.  This is to remove trapped air bubbles.  Top up the brine so that it is about ½ inch from the rim.

Wipe the jar rims with a damp paper towel to clean them and insure a good seal.

Place a hot lid on each jar lid and as you place the lid on, immediately screw down a ring firmly on each jar.

Use your jar lifter to place the jars back in the canning pot.  Make sure that the jars are completely covered with at least one inch of water above the tops.

Turn the heat back on and bring the water back to a boil.  Boil your jars for ten minutes then cut the heat and immediately lift the jars and set them out on the counter to cool.   

As they cool the lids should make a loud pink as the center of the lid pops down a little.  If the lid doesn’t ping down, you do not have a good seal and the peppers will spoil.  All you can do is either replace the lid and ring and re-boil the jar, or discard the peppers.  You may choose to refrigerate the contents and use them in the near future, but I either re-can or discard.

When the jalapenos have cooled for 24 hours; I remove and wash  the rings for re-use, date the jars, and put them into storage.  Be sure that the lid is still popped down and that the seal is intact when you open a jar for use.  If the lid is not down discard this jar as it may contain botulism.  I have never had this problem, but it can happen, so be safe.

One note:  don’t be dismayed if your peppers float up and leave a little empty space of brine at the bottom.  It is almost impossible to pack the peppers tight enough to keep this from happening.

   

All Machines Will Eventually Fail

We’ve all read those prepper novels where the protagonists escape to there well equipped retreats that have everything they need to survive.  They have tractors, garden tillers, chain saws, generators, solar panels, windmills, fuel dumps and lubricants, four-wheel drive vehicles, ham radios, propane tanks, etc., etc., and etc.  They are able to live, and thrive, and help out other poor unfortunates that were not prepared, and when society finally gets back on its feet they are able to re-enter it virtually unscathed.

Well, those are nice works of fiction, but here are some facts.  In the last six months on my farm I have had to replace one car battery, one tractor battery, an ignition switch and a diesel cut off solenoid on a tractor, a chainsaw bar, bearings on a belly mower, the supply line and regulator on a propane tank, a burned out well pump and holding tank, and I still need to replace oil seals on a garden tractor, and roto-tiller.  And that’s just the stuff I can remember. 

The fact is that all machines eventually break down, and the parts to repair them and the power to run them are all dependent on a very fragile manufacturing and delivery system that will not exist after some cataclysmic event disrupts all of that.  You can certainly stockpile some obvious maintenance parts and you can even buy duplicates of some items like chainsaws; but who can afford to have a back-up tractor or a duplicate vehicle that just sits in the garage?  Maybe you, but certainly not poor old country-boy me.

A little ingenuity and a little scavenging may be able to keep things running for a while; but if a crisis lasts long enough, we will all be living on the frontier in the 18^th century.  All farming will be done with hand tools unless you are fortunate enough to have a plow and some mules.   All wood work and wood cutting will be done with hand tools. All cooking will be done on wood.  Your house will be heated by wood and lighted by homemade candles.  Water will be drawn from a well with a bucket.  Soap will be homemade.  Shoes and clothing will be made from home tanned leather.  Think “Daniel Boone” and you will be pretty close to what life would be like if society broke down for ten or fifteen years.

So, what I’m trying to say here is that prepping is a multi-layered situation, and one of those layers is “what if it goes on for years?”  It certainly wouldn’t hurt you to start learning some of the daily living skills that were part of 18^th century life.  Learn how to cook on a campfire.  Learn how to brain-tan leather and make moccasins and clothes.  Learn how to make candles.  Maybe even take up blacksmithing as a hobby.  There are re-enactment groups all over the United States that promote and teach these skills, and it may be worth your time to check one of them out.

Hopefully you will never have to actually live in the 18^th century, but it can be kind of fun to learn how, and it will add another layer of depth to your preparations for a possible calamity in the future.

Candle Holders

When you’ve laid in a good supply of various different candles, you will need something to hold the candles while they are burning.  Your candle holders can be as simple or as fancy as you wish.  You can melt a little wax in a metal jar lid and stick your candle in that. 

You can pour a little sand in a glass jar and stick your candle down in that.  Add a wire bail and you will have a fairly functional lantern that will not be blown out by every breeze that comes along.

I would advise against using wooden candle holders, either store-bought or home-made.  When your candle burns down to the bottom it can catch the wood on fire and then you could have real problems.  You can see by this photo from my earlier candle test that a wooden holder can definitely catch fire.

If your candles will be stationary and inside out of the wind, metal candlesticks work just fine.  I have to admit to having a little bit of a thing for antique pewter candlesticks.  If they are at all reasonably priced, I just can’t pass them up. 

We generally use oil lamps during power outages, but we have been known to break out the candlesticks on occasion.  One winter our power went out about an hour before 12 people were due to come over for dinner and a small after-Christmas party.  We already had the open face wood stove burning, so all we had to do was break out the candles and the party went off without a hitch.  Of course it helped that the attendees were all members of our mountain man club, so they thought the 19^th century ambiance was great.

We have wall sconces in our dining room that hold three candles each, and a candelabrum that sits on the table holding another three candles. 

This makes for a fairly bright dining room, but in any long term situation I would not burn this many candles.  If you have just a couple of candles burning in an average size room you will be surprised at how fast your eyes adjust and make the room seem fairly well lighted.  Not read a book or do needlepoint well lighted, but good enough for most activities.  Remember, most of the old time country folks didn’t “burn the mid-night oil” very often.  Activities that required a lot of light were preformed during the day.  When the sun went down, bedtime was not far off.

If you will be walking around the house with a candle, or especially if you are going outside; a candlestick will not work.  No matter how slow you go, or how hard you try to protect the flame with your hand, your candle will blow out.  What you need is a candle lantern.

There are many different kinds of candle lanterns, but they all have the same basic purpose.  They are made to protect the candle flame from being accidentally blown out while still allowing the flame to illuminate the immediate area.  As mentioned above you can improvise a pretty good lantern with a jar, some sand, a candle, and some wire; but there are many styles of ready made lanterns available.

The punched tin, or Paul Revere lantern is an attractive lantern; but, in my opinion, it is one of the least practical.  It just does not emit enough light, and the light that it does emit is in a very distracting pattern.  I would save this one for decoration and buy a more practical lantern for actual use.

Most stores that carry home decorator items will have a good variety of candle lanterns, and they usually don’t cost that much.  You can buy two or three of these for your home without breaking the bank.

This wooden candle lantern is one that I bought at a mountain man rendezvous. 

 I’ve used it for years, and it works quite well.  The only problem I have with it is that the actual candle holder is wood, so you have to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t catch fire.  Also, you can’t burn really tall candles in it or the flame may set the top on fire.  Sounds kind of dangerous now that I think about it, but I’ve never had any problems.

This last candle lantern is one that I made on the same basic pattern as the mountain man lantern above.  Two differences are that I made it much smaller because I will only burn tea candles and votives in it, and I made the actual candle holder out of a metal jar lid so as to avoid the catching on fire problem.

I also made a little protective box to carry it in.  The box has some storage space on the bottom where I can keep candles, matches, and a chain with hooks to hang the lantern.

 Here is a comparison photo of five different lanterns in use.  From left to right they are (1) candle in a jar improvised lantern, (2) Paul Revere lantern, (3) decorator lantern, (4) wooden mountain man lantern, and (5) small home-made wooden lantern.   

For purposes of comparison the first four lanterns are all burning standard paraffin emergency candles.  Lantern number 5 is burning one of the paraffin tea candles that it was designed for.  All except the Paul Revere lantern produce good light.  I have been known to lay in my cot at night reading by the light of my mountain man candle lantern, so the light must be pretty good.