 All right. So let's get started with Let's Preserve Tomatoes and Salsa. And you're presenter today, Dr. Julie Garden Robinson. Julie is a professor and food and nutrition specialist with MDSU Extension located on the campus of MDSU in Fargo. She's a licensed registered dietitian and does research and outreach in the areas of nutrition and food safety education. She's written a weekly column, Prairie Fair, since 1997. Welcome, Julie. Thanks, Bob, and thanks for your help in coordinating these. So I have another question for you and you can answer in the chat box. How many of you have canned salsa at home? Yes or no? All right. We're going to have some new people who haven't done this before. Not yet. Good. I hope that all of you feel empowered to try something new after watching this series. If you missed the first two of this three series group, please go to the Field of Fork website and you can watch the archived webinar and learn about jams and jellies and also the overall introduction to food preservation. So today, as you know, we're going to talk about canning tomatoes and also making salsa. And this is all based on research from around the United States and the USDA and also the National Center for Home Food Preservation. So one thing I've reminded you each time in our three lessons is that when you preserve food, you are a scientist. It's really important of any type of food handling that you do at home. Canning is the one that you have to be very cautious and you put on your lab coat. Not really. But you are a scientist. It's really important to be accurate. So let's talk a bit about tomatoes. And I'm guessing that a lot of you have lots of tomatoes. I have a huge number of tomatoes. So I will be canning as well this late summer and fall. But as you know, you can buy tomato plants of a variety of types, from beef steak to cherry to grape, heirloom, plum, Roma, and then vine types. It can be either bush or viney. But it's also important that you choose a recipe that's specific for the kind of tomato you're using. So slicing versus paced tomatoes, for example. So Roma is a paced tomato variety. Okay, what about all those wonderful cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes? Well, I double checked and it is not advised to can those because they have so much skin and we do have you skin your tomatoes that, first of all, it probably wouldn't be worth your time and it'd be really difficult to skin tiny tomatoes. So not recommended, but go ahead and eat all you want because we'll also talk about how healthy it is for you to eat lots of tomatoes. Okay, how about blossom androd? Just add that question. You can cut it off and eat it. And you can see a picture of what it looks like, but you don't want to can tomatoes that are not perfect. Basically, you want to can the best, preserve the best, eat the rest. And why does blossom androd form anyway? Well, it can be a lot of different issues. In an earlier webinar, Tom Kalb, who is our specialist out in the Bismarck area in horticulture, talked through a lot of things related to tomatoes. And blossom androd can either be a water issue like too much water or too little water, or it can be a calcium issue. We would get osteoporosis if we went for a long time without enough calcium and tomatoes could very likely be short on calcium, and that's why they form in this manner. So anyway, you can find a lot more information about tomatoes if you check out those archived webinars. We also had a plant pathologist talk with us a couple times as well. So again, you want tomatoes that are disease free. Try to have them ripened on the vine. You're going to get your best flavor, your best color, and you also want them to be firm and not overripe or mushy. So here's where you have to be kind of careful because we never know what's going to happen in the fall in terms of our weather. We don't recommend that you can tomatoes that are on dead or frost killed vines because that can affect the acidity level of the fruit itself. And as we'll learn as we progress through my presentation, pH or acidity is the most important thing in terms of the safety when it comes to canning produce of almost any kind. What about those green tomatoes? Yes, you can can those safely, and they're generally more acidic, and you can follow the same type of guidelines. So you can can your green tomatoes. They're going to taste a little different, but certainly it's a safe thing to do. So again, let's go back to that whole idea of being a scientist with your lab coat on. You want to measure accurately. Some of our recipes are in weights, and some are in measures. It's always more accurate to have a kitchen scale and to use the type of recipe that calls for a particular weight. But you can also use the type with measurement in cups and quarts and that type of thing. But you know, if I were going to sell my product, for example, I would certainly want to use a scale because I wanted to be the same every time I make it. And selling is a whole nother topic. But if you want more information on cottage foods and selling food products, that's something that I work with as well. So follow a tested recipe. And when we say a tested recipe, that means it's been research tested. They have figured out the processing time, the weights of ingredients and what is safe and effective and is going to give you a good quality product. You don't want to decrease the amount of acidic foods. So for example, if you're making a mixture type food like salsa, you don't want to use half the amount of tomatoes and twice the amount of celery and green peppers. If you harken back, if you happen to be on our first session, I talked a lot about pH and celery, green peppers, onions, and those sorts of vegetables are all in our low acid food category. So again, you can decrease or omit low acid foods, but you can increase them. And that's the reason because we have a bacteria, particularly clostridium botulinum, which is our most deadly type of bacteria in canned foods, can grow in a food of a particular pH. So above a 4.6 if you recall that. So let's talk a little bit about jars and lids. You want your jars to be without imperfections. You don't want cracked jars or chipped lids, those sorts of things, chipped tops of the jars. So if they have those imperfections, dents, rust, et cetera, you want to get rid of those. Always wash and rinse your jars. And great idea, sanitize and boiling water for 10 minutes. And we're all very clear on what sanitizing means with our current pandemic, but we don't want to use bleach. In this case, it's boiling water. And then prepare lids according to the manufacturer's directions. You may have grown up if you're a mother or grandmother or dad or whoever canned food in your house where they may have boiled the lids. Well, present guidelines sometimes don't even require heating the lids at all. So read that package that the lid comes in, you know, with that little rubberized ring around the outside you can see in the kettle. And don't do something just because you might have seen a relative do it a long time ago, because we certainly have changed our guidance in those times. And if you boil the lids, for example, I've had a lot of people tell me that their lids come off or they don't seal appropriately. And usually it's in the preparation process. So you don't need to boil them. You might want to wash them off or warm them slightly. So to prepare tomatoes, wash them and by washing, I'm not talking about soap, we just rinse them well in running water. And here's a nice little tip. If you've never canned tomatoes, this is pretty cool. You basically make an X at the top after you wash the tomato. So make a little X and then you dip the tomatoes in boiling water and you'll find that those skins will just fall right off. It's a really handy thing to do. And then you dip them in cold water and then the skins, as I said, will slip off and then you want to take out that core. And if you see any bruised or discolored portions, that's a good time to cut that off as well. But you have perfect tomatoes now, so you probably won't have any bruised or discolored portions. Next, all of our tomato recipes or tomato canning formulations are acidified. That means that you've added the appropriate amount of lemon juice or citric acid. And when I say lemon juice, I'm not talking about the kind of lemons you see on the screen, it comes from them, but bottled lemon juice has been adjusted so it always has the same acidity. So you want to use bottled lemon juice if you're going to can. And that's true in any recipe we have that calls for lemon juice. Or you can use citric acid. And that's the same type of acid that naturally is found in foods such as lemons. So it acidifies or it adjusts the pH or acidity of what you have so that it is safe. So that food product, that tomato, that might not be as acidic as the kind that maybe your grandma or mom or even you experienced as a kid. Because of our collective present, you know, preference for less acidic foods, there have been some, you know, not genetic modifications with plant breeding modifications that have led to maybe a less acidic tomato that doesn't taste quite the same as maybe what you had depending on your age as a kid. So here are the amounts. Two tablespoons of bottled lemon juice or one half teaspoon of citric acid for every court. So you just put that right in the bottom of the jar, your nice sanitized jar, and then you put your tomatoes in on top. Per pint, a tablespoon or a fourth teaspoon. And then if you want, you can add some sugar if you want to offset that slightly acidic taste. And that's if desired, you don't have to add any sugar. But some people don't like the idea of putting lemon juice in. It's there for safety. It's not about taste. It's about safety. Citric acid, by the way, you can find easily in grocery stores or wherever canning supplies are sold. So it's not hard to find. You don't have to order it anywhere or go to the pharmacy or anything like that. It's widely used in our food preservation work. So here we go. We're going to fill the jars with hot tomato products. And you can see some of the handy dandy devices there. There's a little funnel that makes things very simple. Those are very inexpensive, maybe a dollar or two for that blue funnel. You can also get stainless steel types. And then you see the jar lifter. That's just a magnet on the end of a stick, basically a plastic holder. And that allows you to place your slightly warmed lid or even cool lid on top of the jar easily. Always remove the air bubbles, not just so we don't have issues with sealing. As the contents heat up, you're going to be driving the air out of the jar when it's in your water bath canner. So get those air bubbles out by simply, you know, running a plastic spatula around the inside to remove those air bubbles. And then wipe the sealing edges clean, just with a clean cloth. And then you put your two-piece lids on. And again, if you were in any earlier sessions, you remember me saying that you don't want to use your full muscles when you're putting the screw bands on. Just your thumb and your ring finger on your dominant hand and fingertip tight. What sometimes happens is people will bring in their strong person in the household and they'll really tighten up those screw bands and that can cause the lids to warp and they won't seal very well. So no super strength here. It's just fingertip tight. So in a water bath canner, which you can either use a water bath canner or a pressure canner for our tomato recipes. So here's how you do it. If you've never done this, and I see we have a few people who, probably several people who've never canned tomatoes. That's a water bath canner, the granite ware on your right of the screen. So you fill the canner halfway with water. And if you're making a hot pack, what is a hot pack? Well, just like it sounds, you're starting with hot contents like hot tomatoes. You heated them up or hot salsa. It's called a hot pack. So you want to heat that water in your granite ware to 180 degrees. So you're not going to heat it to boiling, which is 212 depending on what altitude you are, just 180. So it's hot. If you're using a raw pack, just like you think, that's raw tomatoes or raw pickles or whatever it happens to be, only 140. And you can guess why the difference in temperature, because if you put cold jars or cool jars with raw food in it in 180 degrees, you could potentially crack the jar. So you do want to go ahead and follow these temperatures. So I guess a thermometer is another thing to have in your collection of tools for canning. And load your jars, and you can see that we have a rack in this. You can see you can lift up the edges or set it in with those handles. You need to be sure that the water is at an inch or even a little more above your jars. So that's why it's a good idea when you're getting your canning supplies ready that you have some extra hot water ready to add in case you need it. And you're going to cover your canner, bring the water to a vigorous boil. So it's over your containers, for example. And then once it is at its vigorous boil, you can lower the heat. So you maintain a gentle boil. You start timing when you're at that boiling phase. So if you put it in and it's not boiling at all or your jars cause the water to cool down a little bit, you got to wait a little bit. So have your timer out. When it's at its boiling point, then you start your processing. Process the full amount of time it says in the recipe. So here's a slide I added. I do have my slides as a handout available on the Field to Fork site with this, what will be a recording. Um, this is a screen capture right out of one of our tomato canning guides. So it's not the greatest quality. As you can see, it's not your eyes. Your eyes are fine, but I just did a screen capture and a copy of this table out of one of our guides. So I do want to draw your attention to how long some of these processing times are. So for example, if you want to cut your tomatoes in half, so that means a halved tomato and you're going to pack it in tomato juice and you're not adding other liquid, look at the time for pints or quarts, 85 minutes, that is correct. At our altitude in Fargo up to a thousand feet. If you're at a higher altitude, which some of you may be 1001 to 3000, it goes up to 90 minutes, 3001 to 6000 up to 95 minutes. So these all vary depending on what you have. So if you are following our recipe and you're making a tomato, vegetable juice blend, top one on the list, you're packing it hot and you're making quarts. And let's say you're at a thousand, you're at 2000 feet. So just read across the table, 45 minutes is the amount of time. So again, really, really important that you know what you're making and what is the time that goes with it. This is totally for safety and it's based on acidity and it's also based on the density of the product, the amount that is packed in the jar according to the recipe. We also have chili salsa on that particular guide, a tomatillo green salsa, and you can see those range from 15 to 20 minutes of processing time. So I just wanted to draw your attention that it isn't a one size fits all when you're making a tomato or tomato type product. You do have to follow a tested formulation and also process for the amount of time that's recommended, which may be more than you think. And I'm going to ask a special request of you, anybody who knows home canners out there who may not be aware of these processing times and the need to acidify, we need your help to reach out and let them know. All of our guides are free and we just want you all to enjoy what you can, not have, you know, a safety issue. And also we want you to have a high quality product that will last well on your shelf. So please help us reach out. Some of this is kind of newer than what some people realize. I'm always amazed by the number of people who have never heard that they should acidify tomatoes. I've been saying it for the last 25 years and I still haven't reached everybody who needs to hear this. So please help us out with that. You also can can tomatoes in a pressure canner. And in that case, you place the jars on a rack in the canner. You don't fill that with water. It's only about two inches of water in the canner. And very important that you know how to use your canner. They're all different. The one on this particular picture is a kind of an old canner. They can be used for a long time. If you have a pressure canner and you haven't used it in a while, we do have our extension agents in many counties across North Dakota who have a pressure gauge tester. And that is a very a very important thing to have tested on an annual basis. And I believe most of them test for free. So it's not going to cost you a lot of money. It's important to have an accurate pressure canner. So be aware of that and be sure that you know how to use your pressure canner. I also get a lot of questions from people who buy old pressure canners at garage sales or estate sales. Same thing calls true. They can be used for a long, long time. But you do have to make sure that you have the gauge type pressure canners tested. There are the other ones that have a jiggly device at the top. They don't need to be tested. There isn't a good way to test those, but the gauge definitely need to be tested. So with a pressure canner, you have to allow that time for steam to exhaust. So you have to take you have to be patient. You can't rush pressure canning. They're not scary like they used to be when when I was a little kid. I never was in the house once when my mother was pressure canning. I had to go outside because she was afraid that it was going to blow up. So I had to learn how to pressure can long time after I left home and never thought in a million years I'd be teaching people how to do this. But again, know your pressure canner. Follow how built in both with our pressure canners as well as our pressure cookers that if we if we use them according to their directions, we don't have to worry about them exploding the way maybe our predecessors worried long, long time ago when they first came out probably right around World War II that era. Again, I've mentioned altitude already. Higher altitude impacts pressure and boiling point. So when you're at a higher altitude, the water will boil at a lower temperature and lower boiling points are less effective in killing bacteria. So that's why we see different processing times depending on altitude. So it's important that you you check out what your altitude is in your area. Allow these jars to air cool for 12 to 14 hours. And then once they're cool, you can actually 12 to 24 hours, I'm sorry about that, remove the screw bands and check the seals. If that center lid is indented and it's time to label and store those jars in a cool dark place, you can keep these for up to well, longer than a year for best quality, we always say a year. If your lid becomes unsealed within that 24 hour time period, you can recan but you have to use a new lid and you have to reprocess. So again, that's why we want to be really sure that we're doing all we can to follow the process. So in the information that goes along with the archive, you can check out canning and freezing tomatoes and making salsa. And I also have a couple other publications that I've listed in in that place. But that takes us on to salsa. And now I'm worried that you're not all there. Are you all there? Bob, can you hear me? Yep, everything's here. Okay, that's great. So in the chat, let's see if you're all still listening. How many of you like salsa? Yes or no? All right. Love it. Love it. Great. Well, we're going to teach you how to make all different kinds of salsa. Some of you are saying you'll like hot salsa or mild salsa or any kind of salsa. Eat more salsa. It is extremely nutritious. And it is the most popular condiment, more popular than ketchup. And the good news is a two tablespoon serving, which isn't that much, is only about 10 calories. And it provides vitamin C, no fat, and lots of other nutrients as well. So as with any type of canning, when you're preparing salsa, start with high quality ingredients. So again, preserve the best. And if you want to invent your own salsa recipe, keep in mind, I'm going to advise that you freeze it. Unless you go and you pay for pH testing, like professionally done, I'm not going to recommend that you do anything other than freeze it. Because we just, we don't know for sure what your pH is. So what's in salsa? Well, it's a mixture of acidic and low acid ingredients. So we have our tomatoes, onions, sometimes garlic, cilantro, lemon juice, sometimes vinegar, and peppers, of course. We can also have lots of different spices. Okay, now here's the big controversy. Is tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Well, technically, tomatoes are a fruit because they contain seeds. They're the fruit of the plant. But when nutrition, consider them vegetables on menus. But it really doesn't matter when it comes down to it. Just eat more fruits and vegetables in general. If you want to call fruits or tomatoes as a fruit, that's fine with me. But again, they provide not only vitamin C, but also some potassium, which is good for our blood pressure. And they provide lycopene. That is the carotenoid pigment, the natural pigment that gives tomatoes their nice rosy red color. And that is the item, the pigment that is linked to lowering our risk for certain kinds of cancer. So they're very healthy. And they're not going to cause you to break your diet. So it's a good thing to try. So again, I've told you a little bit about lycopene already. Lycopene is particularly linked to lowering risk for prostate cancer among men. And here's another tip. Lycopene is better absorbed from cooked or otherwise processed tomatoes, like your canned tomatoes, the canning that we're talking about today. That pigment is better absorbed from those types of tomatoes. So keep in mind, I talked a little bit about this at the start of the webinar, but the type of tomato that we use will impact the quality and also the texture of the salsa. So in many cases, adding some Roma tomatoes to your salsa will make it a little bit thicker naturally. So they're paste or Italian tomatoes, in other words, a slicing tomato yields a thinner, more watery salsa. And if you don't like that watery quality, I'm not going to say, yeah, go ahead and add some cornstarch before you can it. Don't do that. But what you can do is pour out some of that extra water when it's time to serve the salsa or you cook it down. You know, cook it down as much as you want. That will also concentrate the acid. So when it's time to choose your tomatoes for your beautiful salsa, you're going to make, of course, you want them to have a rosy color. You want them to be plump. You don't want blemishes or blossom end rot. And they should be slightly soft to the touch, but you shouldn't be able to squish them like they shouldn't be too mushy. That means they're too ripe. And again, just as a reminder, you don't want to use tomatoes from frost killed vines in canning because of their acidity. You could still eat those. Those won't become poisonous or anything like that. But their acidity will be affected. And you can always freeze your tomato recipes. So in the guide, and I don't, there's not a quiz or test today, but we do provide some approximate equivalence. So if you go to a farmer's market and you buy a bunch of tomatoes, bushels about 53 pounds, which would make about 18 quarts of canned tomatoes. That takes you roughly three pounds of fresh tomatoes to make a quart of canned tomatoes. So we put those handy dandy little equations in your, in your guide. So check that out. How about peppers? I love peppers. I have a bumper crop of peppers this year, as some of you might. They're an excellent source of vitamin C. They're even, they're better than almost anything. They're better than an orange, for example. And the compound in peppers that gives that heat in hot peppers is called capsaicin. And that too is linked with reducing risk for several different types of cancer. So here you have some abundant foods to try to lower your risk for cancer. So no guilt with having any salsa. So add it to your daily diet if you want. When it's time to choose peppers, you want peppers that are fresh and firm. They should have a thick flesh. You don't want diseased or damaged peppers. And you can always vary your pepper selection according to the hotness that you want in your final product. So you can swap in different types of peppers. So you say you love super hot salsa. You can swap in an equal amount of a hotter type pepper into your recipe. And keep in mind too that the smaller the peppers are, they're usually spicier they are. And my daughter, bless her heart, planted a ghost pepper in my garden. And I'm afraid of that. It looks scary. And it's extremely hot. So I've got to make sure that I don't accidentally add that to something or touch it. So here again, just reiterating one type of pepper may be substituted for another, but don't vary the total amount that the recipe requires. And for your trivia this week, we're talking about Scoville heat units. That is the relative heat value of various peppers. So you can see up to 15 million, if you had pure capsaicin, that's that natural compound that gives it the heat. A sweet bell pepper that you might stuff or enjoy in a salad or raw as a Scoville heat level of zero. Whereas a cayenne peppers 30 to 50,000, a poblano 1000 to 2000. So this is a nice little, little guide to think about how hot you're making your your salsa. Habanero, super hot too. 200,000 to 350,000. And as I was reading about how they came up with these numbers, there were some research subjects who had to rate peppers based on one compared to another. So I'm glad being a Scandinavian that I wasn't in that test because I would not have survived the study. So this is a piece right out of one of our salsa guides. Again, you can see the flavor types bell pepper, mild and sweet versus serrano pepper, sweet, acidic, fruity, citrus, and you can see the relative heat units again. Habanero, we can probably pick up some of those somewhere in North Dakota. I don't know that our population loves super hot things. But again, just for your information, most of the time I would say that we're going to use bell peppers and probably a little bit of jalapeno in the type of product that typically is liked in our area. All right, I do have some suggestions for you when you're working with peppers. You want to be really careful because if you accidentally touch your eye or your face, you could actually burn yourself. This capsaicin is very damaging to our skin, mucous membranes, and so on. So wear rubber gloves, plastic gloves, wash your hands very thoroughly. And when you're taking your glove off, do it the way they do medically, you're going to grab from the top and peel it off basically. So you don't want to get that on your skin, especially if you're working with really hot peppers. And I have people tell me that they accidentally rubbed their eyes or I got itchy. You're going to have to wait till later if you get an itchy eye because you don't want to get this in your eyes because it could really hurt. And again, just like with any type of fresh produce, we want to wash peppers, rinse them under running water as you see in the picture before you peel and chop. So here is a method that you can use if you want to peel peppers. You simply slit the pepper on its side and you can either use an oven or a broiler, or you can actually put them on a range top and they'll sort of start burning a bit. And then at that point with your gloves on, if you have a hot pepper, you can peel that away, discard the seeds and chop them up. Works well on a grill too. Pretty tasty to grill peppers, by the way. So here are some equivalents. So if you start with a medium bell pepper and they're asking, you know, you need a cup or two cups, you'd use two medium bells to get two cups, one to get one cup. A large bell pepper is about two cups chopped and a medium jalapeno pepper is about a quarter of a cup. So I believe most of our recipes do use the household measures cups and so on. But again, this is just to help you in choosing how much you're going to need, whether you buy it at the grocery store or pick it from a garden. We also usually have onions and garlic. Again, super healthy. If you don't like onions and garlic, try to do that. They're all part of the Allium family and they contain naturally sulfur compounds and also selenium. Selenium is high in some soil in North Dakota as parts of the state and that's a good antioxidant. So it's protective again against cancer and some chronic diseases and so on. So, you know, garlic and onions don't ever feel guilty about liking those and just have everybody all eat onions and garlic at the same time because, of course, you know, it does affect your breath. Onions and garlic typically will stimulate the immune system and they're believed to inhibit cancer growth and they could even help decrease blood cholesterol levels. So good, healthy compounds like all fruits and vegetables, very good for us. In fact, we should try to make half of our plate fruits and vegetables according to the current guidance. So when we're selecting onions, we want them to be firm, free from cuts and bruises, keep them in a cool dry place or keep them in the refrigerator. If you have some garlic that's starting to sprout, like the picture shown on the slide, you don't really want that because that can also affect the acidity and also the flavor and so on. Garlic heads, just like onions should be firm and we want to keep them in a cool dark place. Certainly after we cut any fresh produce, we do want to refrigerate. You can keep your onions unrefrigerated in a cool dry place, but once you cut them up, you must refrigerate. Equivalent, medium onion is about a cup chopped. Cilantro, if you like it. Some people do not because some of us are super tasters and it might even taste like soap. I have a kid in my family, my daughter again. Cilantro tastes like soap and it's just a natural thing. Some of us, it doesn't taste like soap to me. I like cilantro, but some people can detect it because they naturally have that tendency in their taste buds. So if you want to keep your cilantro for a while, all you do is place it in a container with water covering the roots or stems and then wrap the leaves loosely and you can keep it for a couple weeks in your refrigerator as long as you keep it hydrated. You know, if you don't have the roots on it, it will only last about a week. It is quite inexpensive to buy at the store. Most of the time, you can get a whole bunch for a dollar or two and that will last you a long time. Just like with our regular tomatoes, acidic ingredients are very important for preserving canned salsa and if anyone ever says to me like, I don't like vinegar, I don't like lemon juice, I'm just going to leave it out of my salsa, I'm going to say you don't have safe salsa, you got to freeze that or eat it fresh. If you're going to preserve canned salsa, you must have added acid and I'm going to show you shortly a little research project we did a number of years ago. So again, you can use bottle lemon juice or lime juice, either one is fine, or vinegar, but the vinegar should say that it's at least 5% acid and it will tell you that right on the bottle. The acid in vinegar is called acetic acid. So again, here are the substitutes. Lemon or lime juice can be substituted for vinegar, but you can't do the reverse. Vinegar cannot be substituted for lemon or lime juice. Vinegar is less acidic than lemon or lime juice. If you're making fresh salsa recipes and I encourage you to do that, go ahead and use fresh squeezed lemon or lime, doesn't matter. Same thing is true, if you're going to freeze it and you like that citrusy taste, you can use fresh lemon or lime juice. Again, in fresh or in frozen, but bottled must be used in canned salsa. Okay, so here's a little project we did a number of years ago. I'd kind of forgotten that we had done this, but we actually have a handout that describes this little study that we did. And interestingly, the pH of tomatoes, remember we want less than 4.6 if you were part of one of our earlier sessions. I talked quite a bit about pH. An acidity level less than 4.6 is what we're looking for. That's acidic. Look at how high all of these tomatoes grown in North Dakota were. They were all in that low acid category. They weren't acidic enough to be safe. So then we went ahead and we made salsa. We added lemon juice and you can see that we dropped it into that safe level. And without lemon juice in some cases, we still were too high. Look at it's 4.88, 4.8, 4.7. So we weren't at that magic 4.6 or lower number. So we proved the need in North Dakota to add lemon juice to all the salsa that people make. All right. I think I've touched on this already. If you're using a recipe that has not been researched, tested, serve it fresh, keep it in your refrigerator, use it up within a couple weeks or freeze it. Those are your options. And I hear so many people who, oh, this is my magic salsa and I want to sell it to people and I have to send them on to have their pH testing done and maybe some other testing done as well to make sure that their process is safe. So I'm going to quickly go through the step by step canning. We already talked about preparing the canner. Same thing is true. We're going to hot pack in this case. So that means the water should be 180. We want to have the water at least one to two inches or one to two inches over the tops of the jar lids. So same type of information I told you earlier. With our recipes, again, you're going to check that you have no nicks or cracks anytime you're canning. And I always get a few extra jars ready just in case. So let's say you're making a small recipe and it says it will make four pint jars. I'm going to get five ready just in case. Otherwise, you have to stop and take care of that. And again, same thing holds true for our rings and our lids. You don't have to do anything special with the outer rings other than it's a good idea to just wash them, rinse them off. You don't have to boil them or anything like that. Keep the jars in warm water while you're preparing your salsa. And again, follow the directions for those lids from the manufacturer. And keep an extra pot of water ready just in case you don't have enough in your canner. Get all your ingredients collected. And I want to thank, of course, the National Center for Home Food Preservation. We extracted their pictures for this part of my presentation. So get all, get everything all lined up. Just a good idea. You're going to wash your tomatoes, make that X at the top like I talked about. You can see it in the second picture. And then you dip them, dip in the cold water, slip off your skin and chop. So just little pictures of each one. As we talked about, wash your peppers, rinse them in cold water, cool water. Remove the stems and the white membranes. I do want to stress that the heat typically lies in those membranes and also in the seeds. The more seeds that you take out of your jalapeno, the milder the salsa will be. Then chop your pepper into tiny pieces and then use the amount that you plan to use. You can really surprise your guests if you put a big chunks of jalapeno peppers in. So you do want to chop those nice and fine, especially if they are not liking hot spicy things. So keep all those things in mind. With the onions in the garlic, remove the outer skins, wash again, rinse under cool water, cut away the tough stem, chop into tiny pieces. And there's a handy dandy device you might want to get a garlic press. It's not too expensive, but look at the nice minced garlic you can get if you don't have one of those. Otherwise, you can just chop, chop, chop, chop, you know, chop until you have very finely minced pieces. Canned salsa is always a hot pack. So you're starting with hot jars, hot salsa, and you want your hot water, so that 180-degree water. You're going to combine everything with your vinegar or lemon juice, depending on your recipe, plus seasonings. Bring to a boil, and then you're going to simmer your salsa for 20 minutes. So you're really getting that, those flavors combined and you're also getting that acidity to be uniform throughout. So this is a safety feature as well. It's time now to fill our canning jars. We are going to use a ladle and here we have a jar filler. And you're going to leave some headspace. Headspace is the amount of space between the top of the food in the jar and the top of the jar. And I don't know if you can see my mousing on my screen, but here's a little tip. On the side of a jar, they were very smart when they made this and the piece between the neck and the next part up is a quarter inch and then there's a half inch at the very bottom. So these are all measured for us. The makers of ball jar were really smart when they did this. So they're actually providing you with those little twirls, those little areas around the lid. That's actually also showing you how far or what your headspace is. So that's a good little measuring trick. Again, you're going to remove air bubbles, adjust the headspace, like take some out or put some more food in and then use a plastic knife or spatula as she's doing on the picture here and then wipe the lids or wipe the rims of the jar with a clean paper towel or a cloth because if you have some food on the rim of the jar, your lids may not seal as well as you would like and they could come unsealed or they may not seal at all. So important to have that cleaned well. Put your lids on, fingertip tight. We talked about that and we have our 180 degree water, simmering water and you're going to add the jars to the canner. Don't tilt the jars. No, that's why it's important to have your rack in the bottom. You don't want them to fall on the side because you might hear the pleasant ping of your lid and you really haven't even begun the process of heating the jars. So don't tilt the jars, get them in and then you put the water over the top, one to two inches, bring the water to a boil and at the point of boiling, as we talked about earlier, that's when you start your timer. So if it's boiling, nice gentle boil and it calls for 20 minutes of processing, turn on your timer and at the end of that timing, then you take it out and be sure to put your food on a counter and you can see that in this picture they have a towel. Sometimes if you would put a hot jar onto maybe a cool surface like a cool granite counter, it could actually cause your your jar to crack. You don't want that to happen after you've gone through all this work and growing the food and preparing all this. So you remove the jars from the canner and set them on a thick towel or you could use a plastic or wooden cutting board. And one thing I forgot to mention, let them sit in the canner for five minutes. Okay, 12 to 24 hour sitting on disturbed time, even if you hear that ping, you just go let them sit there and at that point is when you can remove your ring bands and wipe off the outside after you've taken off the ring bands. Don't forget to label with the contents and the date. So list the date and store these in a cool dry place, dark place and I know a lot of people leave the ring bands on but that that is not a recommendation because sometimes they can get stuck. There can be some rusting that happens or it might hold onto a lid, hold the lid in place when it actually isn't sealed. So that can give you a false sense of security that your jars are still sealed. If you have some that are unsealed, just put them in a refrigerator and eat it. Eat it right away, use it within a week or two and you'll be fine. Or you have 24 hours again, you can start over again with new lids and can it over again. You have 24 hours. The storage life is typically one year. If you see signs of spoilage or it smells bad or things like that, you want to get rid of it and the signs of spoilage can be bulging lids, bubbling bad odors as the man used in our slides is showing us. And you want to discard any jars or food in a place where no humans or animals will eat it. So you want to get rid of it. So on our site, I have asked Bob who nicely put in place, let's preserve salsa one, two, and another guide called From the Garden to the Table, Salsa, which I co-wrote with one of our previous horticulture specialists, Ron Smith, several years ago. And I think that's one of the most popular publications we've ever had. Another piece that we've added since I finished this up was a little bit more information about why we should add lemon juice to salsa. So it goes into that little miniature study that we did several years ago. So with that, I have about five minutes for questions before the end of the hour. And let's see, what do we have? Bob, are you going to read them to me? Yeah, I can do that. Thanks for the presentation, Julie. Great job as always. We had a question earlier about lemon juice. Do you have to add lemon juice, even if you're pressure canning, not just hot water bath? Okay. And that's something I looked into this morning. And the answer is, yes, they do recommend that you add the amount of lemon juice or citric acid, even if you are pressure canning. And that's because all of these formulations when they were tested at USDA were tested with added lemon juice. So if it says lemon juice on our recipe, leave it in. And can we use pressure canning when canning salsa? Again, I would want you to find a recipe that was formulated and tested with pressure canning. We can't really make up amounts of time. It really should be based on tested recipe. And there are some that call for pressure canning. So there's some folks who share your daughter's opinion of cilantro. So is it okay to use parsley instead of cilantro? You can, or you could just leave it out. I mean, that's the other option. You don't have to put cilantro in or parsley. You can just leave it out. We have a question here about canning green cherry tomatoes. This person was planning on canning the National Center for Home Food Preservation's Pickled Green Tomato Relish. If they're cherry tomatoes, and it calls for green tomatoes, I guess if you chop them up really fine and you're making a pickled relish type product, it's probably okay. Because that has a lot of added vinegar, I'm guessing. But when I was talking about cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes, I was more talking about canning them as tomatoes, like plain old tomatoes. So I think that would be okay, but I'd probably rather have you use bigger green tomatoes, because again, you're going to have a lot of skin. So if you're going to use them, gotta really chop them up. Okay. Let's see, Katie's asking if we have something that doesn't seal with the canning process, can we put that in the freezer as long as we do that within 24 hours? Yes, absolutely. If it doesn't seal, you can always freeze it. That is totally safe to do within that 24 hour window of time. Good question. Okay. So I think we got to everything. Yeah, so Veronica who was talking about the relish, yeah, calls for 10 pounds of hard green tomatoes finally chopped. Also a quart of vinegar and corn starch. Veronica, you should be fine. That sounds good. Okay. You mentioned corn starch, we're talking about thickness. Can you talk about that little Mars or is it not to use that? If I'm guessing you said that came from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, if it comes from the National Center or from another university and it calls for corn syrup, that means that they have tested the formula with the corn starch. So it's fine to use it. But if you yourself just want to have a thicker product before you can your salsa, you don't want to do that. So it has to be tested with that thickener. So we do have some that call for thickeners. We also have canned apple pie filling and calls for a very specific type of thickener called clear gel. Yes, that's fine because it's been tested and it's safe. So good questions. We just don't want to make up things. That's what I hope nobody gets overly creative. You can be as creative as you want with cooking or even to some extent baking, not as much as cooking, but canning. You're a scientist, not an artist. All right. Well, I don't see any other questions in the chat. So I want to thank everyone for attending today. Oh, well, we have one more come in from Devin here. Late recommendations in the blue book of canning sometimes give times for both water bath and pressure canning. Those should be safe question mark. Yes, if you're using the ball blue book, and it gives you either option, just follow closely what they've done because ball brands, which is now Jardin brands, they do test. One thing you might see, however, in some of the latest ball recipes with beautiful pictures is that they had fresh citrus used and our people are part of our food preservation group from the north central region. We've been talking them out of doing that. So I wouldn't recommend the recipes that call for fresh citrus juice in the brand new ball books, but the ones that you're talking about where they have either water bath canning or pressure canning, those should be perfectly fine. All right. I think we got to them all. Thanks so much, Julie. Awesome presentation or reminder to everyone that all of the webinar series, field of fork webinar series can be found on the field of fork website. So you can see all three in this food preservation series and more than 50 others that have been presented over the years. Thanks so much, Julie. Awesome job. Thank you. And I have one more question from Veronica here. And yes, you can substitute bottled lemon juice for the fresh lemon juice. So yes, you can