Summertime is here and the garden is loaded with fresh tomatoes! In this fun episode from 1994, Arlene is joined by Paige Burgan, who shows her how to cook and preserve homemade salsa and spaghetti sauce. Paige is the wife of Tim Burgan, a longtime member of the Cornerstone TV family. You might remember him as the host of the show, His Place!
Remember, when canning foods it’s very important to follow USDA safety guidelines! Be sure to read the instructions that come with your jars, lids, and other equipment to avoid spoilage. If you don’t want to bother with the hassle of canning, these recipes could probably be frozen in freezer-safe containers, too.
Paige’s Canned Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients
- 1/2- 1 cup olive oil
- 4 medium onions, chopped
- 2 green peppers, chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, chopped
- 7 qt freshly made tomato puree
- 1- 1/4 cups sugar
- 1/4- 1/3 cup salt
- 2 Tbsp dried oregano
- 1 Tbsp dried basil
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 can tomato paste, if needed (12 oz)
Instructions
- In a large stockpot, heat oil over moderate heat and saute onions, pepper and garlic until tender, about 8 minutes.
- Add tomato puree, sugar, salt, oregano, basil and bay leaves. Bring to a boil then simmer, uncovered, about 60 minutes. If sauce is not thick enough, add tomato paste and summer, uncovered, for 30 additional minutes.
- Jar the sauce following canning directions and process quarts for 30 minutes. If salt must be omitted, add 1/2 teaspoon citric acid to each quart jar. Makes 7 quarts. Enjoy!
Paige’s Crockpot Salsa
Ingredients
- 25 tomatoes, peeled, cored, and crushed
- 12 cloves garlic, chopped
- 5 tsp salt
- 3-4 medium green peppers, chopped
- 5 onions, chopped
- 5 jalapeno peppers, chopped
- 2 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 1 1/2 tsp thyme leaves
- 2 1/2 Tbsp sugar
- 2 1/2 Tbsp Worcestershire
- 2 1/2 Tbsp flour
- 2 1/2 Tbsp oil, canola suggested
- 2 1/2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Instructions
- In a crockpot combine tomatoes, garlic, salt, green peppers, onions, jalapeno peppers, chili powder, thyme leaves, sugar and Worcestershire sauce and mix well. Cook on low heat, covered for 8-10 hours.
- Remove cover. Increase heat to high and cook 1 additional hour. Add flour, oil and vinegar and stir well to thoroughly combine for the salsa with thicken slightly.
- Follow canning directions to jar the salsa and process 1/2 and 1 pint jars for 20 minutes. Makes 7 pints. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Well, hello and welcome to At Home today. I hope you’re having a good day. I hope that this has been a very profitable day. Some days you get up and you think, “I’ve got so much to do today, “and I just know I’m going to get it accomplished. “It’s gonna be a good day.” And you get bogged down about halfway through and you think, “Boy, I’m not getting done everything that I wanted.” It’s all right. What you got done and what you accomplished, that’s good. And it’s been a profitable day if you’ve just got one thing accomplished that you set out to do, that’s good. And I hope you’ve picked up your children and you’ve hugged them today and you told them how much you love them, and what a blessing they are to your life. They enrich your life and you enrich their lives. And today I wanna talk to you about the bountiful goodness of God that we enjoy in this country. Just take a look what’s sitting here in front of me on this counter. And I want you to know that harvest time is one of the most beautiful, precious times in all of the year to me. Because when you see this kind of bounty that this country can provide, beautiful. Look at these tomatoes, lush tomatoes. Just gorgeous. Look at this corn, fresh corn. What can be better than all of the good fruits, vegetables that we enjoy that God allows to grow in this country? And I just- My heart is touched when I think that He doesn’t just give us a little bit. God is a God of abundance and He really shares His abundance through the produce and the fruits. That’s something to be thankful for. And if you’re a person who says, “Yeah, but I’d like to enjoy “some of these goodies all year long, “not just in the fall of the year “or in the harvest time.” You’re right, so would I. So, today we’re gonna do some canning. And what’s some of the most popular things that people like to can and are probably some of the easiest to start out with if you’re just a beginner canner? I would say tomatoes. My very special guest, Paige Burgan is gonna be here, yes. Tim Burgan’s wife. She’s gonna be here. She’s quite the canner and quite the homemaker, quite the mother and quite the wife. She’s gonna show us the basics of canning right after this really important At Home hint. We’ll see you in just a minute.
- [Narrator] Here’s today’s At Home Hint from Rita Spence. What to do with overripe bananas you ask? Peel, wrap, and freeze them. Blend while still frozen into frozen fruit drinks or milkshakes, delicious. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499.
- Well my guest, Paige Burgan, please come and join us. We’re really glad that you’re here today.
- Hi.
- Yeah, it’s good to have you. And you’ve been canning, right?
- Yes.
- Major canning.
- Major canning.
- This is a woman you can tell by the hands when they’ve been canning because-
- I have no nails
- They’re gone, right? Well, I thought this would be interesting to our viewers because many out there feel like canning is something I wouldn’t even try, but it is rewarding, isn’t it?
- Yes, it is. When you get to go out to your garden and get the stuff and know that come December, January, February, you’re still gonna be eating it. It’s wonderful.
- That’s right. And also when you have like a can of tomatoes that you have planted and you’ve picked them-
- They always taste better.
- They do and in December, in January, they really taste good. Well, what are you gonna make for us today?
- Gonna make some spaghetti sauce and some salsa.
- Well, salsa is something.
- Those are my family’s two favorites.
- Yes everybody’s, everybody’s eating salsa. And if you can get all of the ingredients for it now, and you can can it, it saves you a lot of money, right? ‘Cause I know a jar sauce is about this big is like a dollar 79 to 219. And really it’s just tomatoes, onions, peppers, and little seasoning and stuff, so why not make it right?
- And for our family, we plan on going through at least a jar a week. So I make sure I make at least 52 jars and then we’re set.
- Just to cover it all, all right? That’s great. Let me get out of the way and just help yourself. She’s got some things that she’s already done, but she’s gonna show some basics now on how you can do canning easily, all right.
- I didn’t cry and do stuff as I did onions, I did those ahead too.
- Okay, good.
- First you put for the spaghetti sauce, start off putting some olive oil, about a half a cup.
- Okay, how much is this gonna make first of all?
- This will make about eight quarts of spaghetti sauce.
- That’s the big size quart that we see down here in the front. That is one large
- Seven or eight.
- Seven to eight, okay, let me reach that if I can. This is a large jar. And this would be enough to serve, like for a pound of spaghetti, something like that.
- We have a family of four and I usually use the jar for each meal.
- Okay, good.
- So that, you get me a spoon. Add three to four onions that I’ve chopped up.
- Now do you have to keep, like you have to cook everything, come to completion when you can?
- Yes, I just saut it. Yes, you could eat it out of the pot or you could can it. Add some green pepper. This is like two green peppers chopped up. And if you have kids that don’t like the green peppers and onions, just like put them in your blender and puree them and stick them in. And they’re still of the flavor but your kids don’t know that they’re there.
- Yeah the kids don’t know and they’re not picking them out as they’re trying to have dinner, right?
- So we saute this just until they’re soft. Add some garlic.
- Okay, a couple of cloves add to taste probably, right?
- Yeah, I usually put a lot in. I usually put in like three or four cloves. And then at the end, if it doesn’t taste quite right,
- You can adjust it
- right before you can it, add some garlic powder,
- Sure
- if you want some more.
- If you really want to enhance it, huh? And that’s the easiest way in the world to do your garlic. Just smash it and chop it fine. Now this is a girl who knows how to use a French chef knife. Me I tell you all the time I use that little Perry knife. ‘Cause I don’t know how. She obviously does because she cans a lot. And this stuff is there to help you, why not use it, right?
- Right.
- Right.
- Sauting this, get it going. And then you add your squeezed tomatoes. You can do them however you want. Some people like chunks of tomatoes, so you just kind of crush them. Other people like them in a blender. I use this gadget called a squeezer, where you put the tomatoes in the top, crank it, and the puree comes out one side and the skins and peel, come out the other end.
- Now we’re talking, this is the kind of tomato, they’re your home grown tomatoes, right? Look at these tomatoes, beautiful.
- I usually use these ones for the salsa. And I use the little, the roma plums for my spaghetti sauce.
- It’s just kind of like, that’s an odd shape.
- Kind of pear shaped
- Pear shape. That’s right. You have one over here. There’s different kinds of tomatoes too. And these are the little, this is the little plum size. And then this is the one that everybody gets. Look how pathetic that looks because it looks anaemic. It’s not bright, beautiful color. And hold on, here, look at this nice bright red one. This is a good.
- You wanna take a bite.
- Yeah, you do. You say where’s the bagel? Gimme the knife, I’m gonna cut myself a piece and enjoy. Just a different variety. All have their place but I think this plum tomato, Italian plummets, is that what they’re called?
- Yes.
- Italian plum? This is good for this type of thing. Now what you’ve added there- Now, how many tomatoes about, would that take to do that?
- Oh, I go by, that’s a bowl size. I use it’s two, that’s a bowl, which is probably half a bushel.
- Half a bushel, okay. And what she does, you have to take the peeling, the skin off of this and you just blanch this in water. Show me how you do it.
- Put an x, this knife isn’t really sharp. Across the bottom and then I have a little gadget here that takes the core out real nice.
- Look at that. What is that little gadget? That’s neat.
- It’s called a tomato shark. Plop it in here, leave it in there just 30 seconds. Pull it out and the peel will just,
- come off
- come right off.
- And then you just squeeze the pulp in. So that’s what she’s=
- If you wanna just squash.
- That’s what she’s added to her tomatoes and her onions.
- Or you can use like a Foley food mill type thing and squeeze the tomatoes through or whatever you want. Now I add some sugar,
- [All] it’s to taste. I use about a cup. Salt, if you can’t use salt, you can replace with like a citric acid type thing. Use a half a teaspoon per cord of sauce. But Tim and I both don’t have a problem with salt. So I just-
- Now, would you add this to the cord or would you add it to the-
- I would add it to the cord at the very end.
- [Both] So that it’s evenly distributed.
- Oregano about two tablespoons.
- Now, do you grow your own oregano?
- Yeah, that’s why I have the little containers.
- See I told you. This is one good homemaker, this girl.
- I like to squish it as I put it in. It releases some more of the flavor.
- Flavor, sure. How long have you been canning?
- I canned when I was a little girl doing peaches with my mom and spaghetti sauce. And then since I’ve been married 11 years, I’ve been doing spaghetti sauce and salsa. And this is basil.
- Basil, okay.
- Add about a tablespoon of basil.
- She and Tim have two children and they’re just as sweet as they can be, Amanda and Christopher. And there’s another reason to do all of this, right? Because they enjoy it.
- The kids help me a lot. They like squishing the tomatoes. Flop that off.
- Ooh, it’s a hot one.
- But you see,
- Oh, it just pulls right off.
- Peels right off whenever you-
- You also have this best of fingers I’ve noticed, and that comes with canning. Now you would let this cook till how long?
- I’ll let it cook an hour or two hours. Check the thickness, see how it’s doing. If you used more of the round tomatoes and it’s running your sauce, add some tomato paste to thicken it up. Cheater way but let it go a couple hours. And then it’s time for canning.
- Now, could you add meat to that?
- Not if you’re gonna can it. I mean, there are ways to do it, but you have to pressure can, whenever you add meat.
- So it’s a different process than what we’re showing you. So don’t do it. What about mushrooms? Could you put mushrooms in there?
- A little bit, but the more non acid foods that you add to it, the more citric acid or salt you have to add to bring out the balance.
- I see. And acid food, you would do this water bath, because the acidity-
- Helps in the preserving process.
- So we’ve got the sauce going. Now, let’s do the salsa.
- Okay. The salsa I do in a crock pot, overnight. And I add,
- You do your tomatoes the same as you do for, or do you chop them?
- I squish them completely. Those are more pureed, for these I have big tomatoes and I sit and squish them in here. And you can do that if you want.
- Thank you. I have to get off the jewelry because-
- I use a three and a half cord crock-pot for this and dump in the five onions that I’ve chopped. Three to four green peppers.
- Are you gonna have room for all of this in here? It doesn’t look like it, uh?
- It all squishes down, once you get to it.
- So all you just have to do is this.
- And you just add these until- That’s my kid’s favorite part.
- Oh yeah, kids. Add jalapenos.
- As an adult it’s a little fun too. Now those, tell us what you have to do with those.
- These, I use rubber gloves to chop because I have sensitive skin and if I touch my mouth or touch my eyes, it burns really bad.
- I’ve spend some uncomfortable evenings because I’ve done that. Just what you’ve talked about. So you can get the disposable gloves anywhere, right?
- Yeah.
- Just get them and do it.
- My husband wants me to use habaneros the next time.
- Now, what’s that?
- And they are very spicy. Like on a scale of one to 10, jalapenos are a five and a habaneros are 10. So that’s a lot more.
- Where do you get them? Do you grow, you grow them?
- I’ve seen them in the Strip District. I don’t grow habaneros, I grow jalapenos and bell peppers and stuff like that.
- So now how long do you have to let this cook then?
- Okay, this stuff we add the tomatoes, add
- I feel like a little kid, squishing here.
- Add the spices. I lost my garlic in here. 12 cloves of garlic.
- 12?
- 12 cloves there.
- Is it all chopped fine?
- All minced.
- Oh okay.
- Oh, that really is- Whew, that’s some strong garlic, man. But that helps and it’s good for you. And it helps to pick up the flavors and give it that tang that you want salsa to have.
- With these, we add some chili powder.
- It’s about a tablespoon, half a tablespoon?
- Two and a half teaspoons. Thyme, I use about a teaspoon and a quarter. And again, people can add more or less of that if they like it. Some sugar.
- Just a little bit of sugar there. ‘Cause you don’t want a sweet tasting sauce.
- Right.
- Let’s say this Paige, but there’s not much in the way of juice here, but as it cooks, it’ll juice up. Is that right?
- Yes, we can add some Worcestershire sauce two and a half tablespoons of that. I can never say that word correctly.
- Me either, so. I’m sorry, I can’t help you there. Now this looks like it’s not gonna get done, but it will, won’t it?
- It will, it will all fit eventually. Let’s moosh it in. And wallah, alla television. Here’s the finished product of that after it’s cooked all night long.
- And you would cook this all night long.
- Yup.
- Oh, look at that. Can you see that? I hope I get an overhead shot, so they can really appreciate.
- If you want it chunky, you just do it like I did there, and it’s a chunky salsa.
- I wish you could smell it, it smells so good. That would be a welcome addition to any tortilla chips that I know, believe me. We’ll be right back with more about canning in just a minute, stay tuned. Yeah, you gotta do. Well Paige, let’s tell them what you did after this cooked for 12 hours. This is the salsa and then what do you do?
- Add two and a half tablespoons each of flour, red wine vinegar, and any kind of oil. I use canola. Stir it up and turn the heat off.
- And turn the heat off. And then this is ready to be canned. And that’s what she’s gonna be showing us now. How we can salsa and spaghetti sauce.
- First and foremost is –
- Give us some basics.
- Your jar. You can use, some people use mayonnaise jars. I used them when I first started canning and they tended to crack too often. So I always recommend people using the store bought mayonnaise of-
- I don’t think they’re temporary. Like these jars have to be temporary-
- To be re-used.
- That’s right. And the other thing is really important is you always use a clean brand new lid.
- Yes.
- You never reuse a lid because the air will get in there and it will contaminate the food and you will not be able to use it because it will be spoiled, yeah.
- And for me, I’ve used lots of different kinds of lids and to put a plugin, ball lids really work the best Check your jars, especially when you’re reusing them. Check the rim, run your finger on it, make sure there’s no cracks. Visually look at it and say, okay, that’s not cracked. It’s a good jar, I can use it. And before you fill them, they have to be sterilized. At home, I do it in the dishwasher. Lock them away in the dishwasher. As long as you leave the dishwasher closed, till you’re ready to use it, you can do it.
- It works well.
- Here-
- And if you don’t have a dishwasher, you can steam them in or sterilize them in the canner, right?
- Boil them for 10 minutes in your canner.
- You amaze me, how you do that with your fingers. I mean, she has no gloves on, this is not safety. But Paige, I told you has best of fingers.
- This is my safety device, here. When you really wanna touch the hot jar though, you use these jar lifters.
- That’s a good idea.
- And never put a hot jar on a cold surface or it will crack. So you put them on a cloth or on a wooden container.
- And would you get all of them out at one time?
- You’re supposed to get one out at a time. I usually get two just for speed’s sake. And then this is another nifty gadget. It helps keep your jar rooms clean.
- Because that’s the second thing that you have to do. You always have to keep the rim clean or you won’t have a perfect seal, right?
- Yes. You fill it up. Different things, call to be filled different heights. So you check your recipes, whether they’re to a quarter of an inch, to a half an inch head space. How I can tell is where the middle of the rim is. That is like the quarter of an inch. And for salsa, that’s what it is.
- And how do you know if it expands or not?
- Different things expand differently. Like applesauce really expands a lot. So you need to give it like a full half, an inch head space. Tomato products and jellies and stuff they don’t tend to expand. Then this is a clean cloth. You wipe the rim to make sure-
- Everything’s off.
- That you didn’t spill anything at all. And these lids, it gives you instructions on them, how to do them, but you put them in water, bring it to a simmer and then turn it off and keep them in the hot water.
- Yeah, because that has to be hot because it’s the steam, the heat. And this has to be real hot thing. The ingredients have to be hot.
- The ingredients have to be hot, the jars have to be hot. the lids have to be hot. And you’re careful not to touch the sealing element.
- This element, right?
- Set it on there and then firmly-
- Oh, you push down to the middle.
- That’s just to hold it in place. And just firmly tighten. You don’t want to really crank it on, but you want it on tight enough to do it.
- Now, how do you know when it’s sealed?
- After you can it, you take it from here and you put it in the water, lower it, put the lid back on. Make sure that the jars are filled with at least a half inch of water over top to allow for the bubbling to be covered. You leave it in there. For salsa it’s 25 minutes.
- How long is it for spaghetti sauce?
- A half an hour.
- So a little bit longer for that.
- Yeah. Cause it’s a, I usually do the spaghetti sauce in a cord jar. So a bigger jar, it has to go longer.
- You need extra time?
- Sure.
- Okay, so we’ve done that. And now it is processed salsa for the 20 minutes, 25 minutes. Now what are we gonna do?
- Pull it off out of the water. Set it down again on a cold surface and you let it sit there. Out of a draft, make sure if you’re canning in the early fall and it’s a little cool, that there’s not a window open blowing on it, it sits there overnight. And as the day is going on, you’re gonna hear this, pop.
- Really?
- In some of the jars as the lid sucks down, it pop’s.
- And it seals it, right?
- Yeah.
- Because there’s this little concave, like a little bubble right in the center of the lid and that means-
- Yeah, this is an applesauce that’s sealed.
- Okay.
- You push on that.
- So that’s not there, it’s gone. So that means when the heat has, and is sealed, it’ll pull the lid down and this little bubble will be gone. I’ll be nice and flat like this one.
- And you touch this one, you hear that pop?
- But you don’t on this one?
- Right?
- Because this one is sealed. This one has not yet. Now when you make jellies, do you use the same process? Like do you have to process them in the hot water bath?
- Each jelly is different, but usually if you use one of the store bought pectins, you don’t need to process it. They tell you just to flip it over and then flip it back, and it sucks down all by itself.
- When I first, when Paul and I first got married 25 years ago, I made jelly. ‘Cause he’s take grape jelly in his lunch all the time. And we sealed with wax.
- That’s how my mom always sealed it.
- You see, yeah. Because you would just, when that jelly is there, but what would happen, you’d pour the hot wax in, and it would go down in the middle of the jelly, and then you’d have a dickens of the time getting that off and to pull it is like a plug down in the bottom of the jelly.
- I never had that of.
- Yeah, and little bits of wax of you on your teeth ’cause you’d be scraping it off. This is so much easier and safer to I think. Because I think we really have to be careful that we don’t give opportunity for bacteria to form. And I think canning is a wonderful way to preserve the harvest that we enjoy. But boy, it can be a bad trip if it’s not done properly and you don’t do it well. So it’s a good thing to keep in mind. All right, let’s do it one more time, so we can be sure that folks know this step process one more time. The jars are sterilized in this hot water.
- I’m trying to get one.
- How do you get one huh? Do you use like all the smart, the narrow mouth or do you use some of the wide mouth?
- I use whatever I have. The good thing is wide mouth is if you’re doing peaches or something, when you wanna be able to really work with it. ‘Cause the narrow mouths are hard to work with. But also if you want it if you’re really new at it, and you’re not sure you’re gonna seal right, if you use wide mouth and it doesn’t seal, you can freeze it. And the wide mouth is it expands, it won’t crack the jar.
- And you could get it out of there easy because the mouth is wide. That once it starts to thyme, it can come out.
- And that’s very good.
- All good things to remember. Good tips. How many jars would you say that you probably can in the fall, like say one fall?
- Last year I went through 32 dozen lids.
- 32 dozen?
- 32 dozen.
- Okay, what’s my math here. That’s like 390 almost.
- 360
- Yeah, tons of
- We can for three families, me and two of my friends get together and we can, and we make sure each of us has like 52 jars of spaghetti and sauce. And we also do tomato soup, apple sauce, apple butter.
- What a wonderful way. That’s nice to get a couple of friends together that have children or that are watching their .
- Their teenagers watch my babies while we do it.
- That’s great. That’s nice, that’s wonderful. Thanks, Paige. That’s really good. We’ll be right back after this important message on how you can get today’s recipes for everything that you’ve seen and the process for canning. We’ll be right back in just a minute. That’s good. [Advertiser] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive our liens heartwarming newsletter enjoy, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the enjoy issue number with your request.
- Well, I hope today that you’ve enjoyed the program about canning. We’ve given you basic recipes, basic instructions. And I would like to motivate you. Just to give us some thought about when this harvest is bounty comes in, use it to your advantage. And Paige, I wanna thank you for sharing your recipes and sharing the hints. And if there was somebody out there who said, “I still don’t think I can do that.” What would you say to them?
- Give it a shot. Anybody can do it. Grab a friend to help you.
- That’s right. And you’ll be amazed that the feeling of gratification that you get, when you see these jars lined up on your counter and you know that it’s been the work of your hands in preparation, lovingly preparing them for your family and friends, this is a great gift for Christmas. This is a birthday gift. This is just a friend on your neighborhood. Fix them a nice can of your own special sauce, a pound of spaghetti and a nice hello. And until we see you next time, be sure to join us. We’ll see you then.
- [Advertiser] Fresh food is provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, PA. Cookware provided by Wholey’s, your favorite gourmet deserves the best for less from Wholey Balcony Cookware. Groceries provided by Foodland where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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