Culinary yoU

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Pace Style Picante Sauce

There are a ton of 'picante' sauce or 'salsa' brands on your local supermarket shelves for you to choose from for snacking with a big ole bag of tortilla chips while watching your favorite movie, or sports program. Well maybe a ton is an over statement, and well a ton is actually a measurement of weight and not a measurement of quantity, but I digress. Of all the picante style sauces, my favorite is one of the originals 'Pace Picante Sauce' developed in 1947. I has what I believe is a well balanced flavor with just the right consistency and size of chopped veggies.

I grew up eating the original Pace brand “medium” picante sauce, and while the company has gone on to add a variety of additional flavors and styles such as “chunky”, “mild”, and “hot”, the original is still my favorite. Besides, Pace picante sauce is an Texas original, not some family sauce created by someone up in New York City. So if you like the original, then making your own with fresh ingredients from your garden is even better.

So I took about 30 to 35 pounds of assorted tomatoes along with some cucumbers from the garden to my friend Steve Coyne's house who writes the 'I Grow Vegetables' blog and we decided to do some power canning (we also canned kosher dills, and refrigerator pickles). We used about 25 pounds of the tomatoes for picante sauce, and Steve made ketchup with the leftover skins and the cherry tomatoes. Anyway, here is my Pace style picante sauce recipe. It is easy, quick, and delicious and one I make every year. We just cannot seem to keep enough in the pantry. BTW, you can find Steve's recipe for refrigerator pickles by clicking on his blog link 'I Grow Vegetables'.

The Base Recipe

Honestly, the ingredients listed on the Pace “medium” sauce label are quite straightforward. Crushed tomatoes, jalapenos, onions, distilled vinegar, salt, garlic, water, and natural flavoring (whatever that is). As you can tell, the original Pace recipe was pretty basic, and I happen to think that Mr. Pace got it right with his original sauce. This base recipe is pretty close to his original “medium” style sauce. With this base as your foundation you can develop your own particular variation of the sauce to suit you and your families particular tastes.

10lbs tomatoes

3 jalapeno's, diced

2 large onions, diced

¾ cup distilled vinegar (5% acidity)

2 tablespoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons granulated sugar (optional)

1 tablespoon pickling salt

Wash tomatoes, remove the core from the small blossom end and then cut an 'X' on the bottom of the tomato with your paring knife. Place the tomatoes in a large pot with boiling water for 90 seconds. Then remove them and place them in a large bowl with ice water. Then remove the skins and coarsely chop the tomatoes and add to your stockpot.

Dice the onions and jalapenos and add them to the stockpot (wearing rubber gloves when you dice up the jalapenos will keep your hands from burning). Then add the remaining ingredients (except the sugar) and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally to keep the salsa from burning.

Chef's Note: Do not add any additional water to the recipe, the liquid you get from boiling, dipping and removing the skins along with the vinegar is enough moisture. Adding extra water just means you have to cook it longer.

Reduce the heat and simmer the salsa for 30 to 45 minutes or until the mixture thickens. Once your salsa has the desired thickness, check the seasoning and add additional salt to taste. At this point you may add 1 – 2 tablespoons of sugar if you like your salsa to have a slightly sweet taste. Once you have adjusted the seasoning to your satisfaction, ladle the hot salsa into hot jars leaving ½-inch of headspace. Adjust lids and rings and process pints in a water batch canner for 15 minutes.

Chef's Note: Unlike my pasta sauce, I do not add tomato paste to my salsa. Rather I cook the salsa until it is thickened. You could use tomato paste to thicken your salsa if you desire, but for this recipe, my personal preference is to cook it down as it only takes 30 to 45 minutes rather than add tomato paste.

Chef's Note: When trying to determine the number of jars you will need when processing salsa, on average most recipes in the Ball Blue Book (see below) indicate that you get about 1 pint of salsa for each pound of tomatoes used. Of course adding more onions or other veggies may increase this number. For this batch of salsa we used 20 to 25 pounds of salsa and canned 20 pints.

Variations On A Theme

For this particular batch, I added a couple of bell peppers that I had in the refrigerator, but this recipe is so basic and right on, that there are an endless number of variations that you can make. Unless specified, all the base ingredients are the same, some of the techniques may be different. Some of the more popular variations include:

Mild – For a milder sauce, remove the seeds and membranes from the jalapenos before dicing them.

Hot – Increases the number of jalapenos to 6 to 8, and leave the seeds and membranes intact.

Chunky – For chunky variations either “mild”, “medium”, or “hot” simply cut the tomatoes and onions into larger chunks, pretty simple huh?

The possibilities are endless, for the batch in these photos I used only items from my garden so the pepper content was slightly different. I added a couple of green bell peppers, that we had in the fridge, two serranos, one jalapeno, and one poblano pepper (I didn't have enough jalapenos, and Steve did not have any). I could have bought some at the supermarket, but I was lazy. I just opened one of the jars that we made yesterday, the flavor as always is spot on, but it was a “mild” sauce as we doubled the recipe and we only had enough peppers for a single recipe. Anyway, I almost always add just a touch of sugar for a little sweetness. I know the original Pace ingredient label for "medium" picante sauce doesn't include sugar, and if your tomatoes are sweet enough you may not need it. However, we like our salsa with just a hint of sweetness.

Conclusion

If you like 'Pace' brand style original picante sauce, then you will definitely like this recipe. I make some every year and I cannot keep it in my pantry. The only complaint I get is from the grandkids, they want it to be hotter, but my wife likes it “medium”. So each year I have to tell the grandkids that I prefer to sleep in my bed and not the couch...[Grin]. Anyway I do always make a few jars with added jalapeno's for them, but I pretty much stick to the base recipe listed here. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and do not forget to send us a friend request on Facebook or add us to your circle on Google+ to get notifications regarding our latest recipes and articles.

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Spaghetti Sauce For Canning: My Garden Variety Recipe

Usually when I make any kind of tomato based sauce my wife helps me core, blanch and peel the tomatoes to remove the skins. However, when we make this sauce we simply core the tomatoes and remove any blemishes and cut them in halves or quarters with the skins on. Then, I throw them in my 15 year old Oster shaft driven blender and puree the heck out of them. Now I have to say that this blender is a beast, it will crush ice with ease and will puree just about any vegetable out there with a little liquid. When we make this sauce it purees the tomatoes so well you cannot even tell that they are any skins in the sauce when it is cooked.

This sauce is our short on time, have to many vegetables from the garden sauce, hence the name 'Garden Variety'. It is packed full of vegetables because I puree them all and if I did not tell you, you would never even know there were in there. And that's great, because I am a big texture eater and just cannot eat cooked squash which my wife loves, so I have to hide my veggies from myself while increasing the nutrient value of the sauce. I know kinda sounds moronic and childish, that a 53 year old man has to hide his vegetables in order to eat them, but it is what it is.

The recipe

There is nothing really fancy about this recipe, it is pretty much a basic spaghetti sauce recipe with a few of my own personal tweaks. This is our base recipe, if we have zucchini squash we add it, last year we used banana peppers instead of bell peppers because we had a bigger crop of them as opposed to our bell peppers. If you have them and you like mushrooms, add 1lb fresh mushrooms sliced, or 1 cup of chopped celery (when used, I have to puree it because my grandson does not like it, and he never knows it's there). Anyway, I digress here is the recipe we use a lot, it has served us well and it will do the same for you. It shares some ingredients from both the 'Spaghetti Sauce' recipe found in the USDA Complete Guide To Home Canning (section 3, page 14), and the 'Italian Tomato Sauce' found in The Ball Blue Book (in the 2011 version it is on page 74).

20 – 25lbs assorted tomatoes

6 yellow squash (8 to 10” in length), peeled and cubed

3 green bell peppers, seeded and diced

2 large onions, diced

¼ cup granulated sugar (optional)

4 tablespoons garlic, minced

2 tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon marjoram

4 teaspoons basil

4 teaspoons oregano

4 teaspoons parsley

2 teaspoons black pepper

2 teaspoons red pepper flakes

2 bay leaves

Core and dice all of your tomatoes and puree them in your blender and add them to your stockpot. Any liquid that you have leftover from when you were dicing the tomatoes goes into the stock pot as well. Take the time to make sure you have a big enough stockpot before you get started, having to wash extra dishes is a pain in the backside. I use a 15 quart granite ware stockpot that I purchased at Wal-Mart which you can still purchase for less than $20, so if you do not have one, get one.

Chef's Note: You want to avoid using an aluminum stockpots because high acid foods such as tomatoes can cause a metallic taste to be leeched from the aluminum into the food you are preparing.

Peel and dice the yellow squash and in small batches, add it to the blender with a little of the pureed tomatoes (the liquid makes it easier to puree the squash) and process until all the squash is pureed. Then core, seed and dice the bell peppers and set them aside, dice the onions as well. Then process the onions and bell peppers in your blender until they are pureed as well.

Chef's Note: If you want, you can leave the onions and bell peppers as small dice, but you should definitely liquefy the squash. The USDA has concerns that some yellow squash may possibly contain harmful bacteria and does not recommend that it be canned in either the sliced or in cubed form. In this recipe, we are going to be removing the skin, pureeing the squash and cooking it in a tomato based sauce for about 2 hours. I bring the sauce a rolling boil then cook it for 10 to 15 minutes before reducing the heat to kill any bacteria that might be present (not likely since we grow our own, but hey safety first). Note that the Center For Disease Control CDC states that boiling a liquid for 1 to 3 minutes (depending on altitude) will kill all pathogens.

Add the remaining ingredients to your stockpot (except the sugar) and bring to a rolling boil and cook at this level for 10 minutes, make sure you stir the sauce frequently during this time to keep it from scorching, especially if you have a thin bottomed stockpot. After 10 minutes, reduce the heat to low, cover your stockpot and cook for 60 minutes. After you have cooked the sauce for 60 minutes begin adding the sugar to get the desired sweetness you and your family like. Usually, I just dump it all in, but individual preferences vary so go slow, you cannot remove the sugar if you the sauce too sweet for your tastes.

Thickening Your Sauce (The Crossroads)

At this point you have two options to thicken your spaghetti sauce. The first option takes the longest and is preferred by some canners and is recommended by the USDA as well. That option is to cook the sauce until it is reduced by about half and thick enough to be served directly over pasta. Cooking times may vary depending on the moisture content of the tomatoes and associated vegetables used in the sauce. The second option is to use canned tomato paste. I know, I know, I hear the gnashing of teeth and the howls of canners venting their rage against the idea of using a commercial product to thicken there prized home made spaghetti sauce. So call me a blasphemer, but after 60 minutes of cooking the sauce I add 2 (6-ounce) cans of tomato paste to my stockpot and get ready to process it into quart jars in my weighted gauge pressure canner.

If you decide to use tomato paste, the easiest way to incorporate it into your sauce it to place half of can of tomato paste in a medium sized bowl, then ladle some of the hot spaghetti sauce into the bowl and mix with a wire whisk. Then add the contents of the bowl to your stockpot. Repeat as many times as necessary until you have added all the tomato paste. This keeps the tomato paste from sinking to the bottom of the stockpot an not getting thoroughly integrated into the spaghetti sauce. I have presented you two options to thicken your pasta sauce, the path you choose is up to you, they both work equally well, and unless you tell someone they will never be the wiser.

Chef's Note: Even after I add the tomato paste, my sauce is a little thin, I like to can it that way and then when I make spaghetti I simmer it uncovered to reduce any additional moisture. I would rather have my sauce a little thiner so that I can process it safely than get it to thick.

Processing The Sauce (10lbs PSI)

While tomatoes may be a considered a high acid food, the addition of other ingredients in the sauce has the potential to reduce the pH making it dangerously close to the low-acid food line. Therefore, in order to maintain safe canning practises, this sauce needs to processed in either a weighted gauge or dial gauge pressure canner. Once the sauce has reached the desired consistency, reduce the heat to simmer or 'keep warm' dial on your burner if you have one to keep it hot.

Ladle the hot sauce into hot jars leaving about 1-inch of headspace (do not forgot to remove the bay leaves). Remove any air bubbles and adjust headspace as necessary. Apply the two-piece lids and bands and place in your pressure canner and process pints for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes at 10lbs of pressure (PSI).

Chef's Note: If you add meat to this sauce, then you must process it just as you would any meat product. Pints for 75 minutes, and quarts for 90 minutes at 10lbs of pressure (PSI).

Conclusion

This spaghetti sauce recipe is extremely flexible and easy to make, and just about everyone I know enjoys a good meal with spaghetti and garlic bread. The thing that we like most about this recipe is that it allows us to use whatever vegetables we have on hand from the garden to enhance not only the flavor, but the nutrient content of the sauce. In addition, adding additional veggies increases the yield of the sauce making it go further. If you find that you do not have the individual dried spices in your pantry, simply substitute 4 tablespoons of 'Italian Seasoning', if you like your sauce a little spicy, add 1 tablespoon of red pepper flakes, one of my favorite additions is 2 teaspoons of fennel seeds which I pulverize in my mortar and pestle.

Most additions you can make without any concerns that it will affect the processing time of the sauce in your pressure canner. The one exception to this rule is if you add any type of ground meat to your spaghetti sauce then you will have to process the sauce for an extended amount of time as recommended by the USDA. Therefore, the addition of meat to your sauce require that pints must be pressure canned for 75 minutes, and quarts for 90 minutes at 10lbs of pressure (PSI).

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Watermelon Rind Pickles

Well the 4^th of July holiday has come and gone, and guess what watermelon was on sale. As we were unable to get together for the holiday weekend we bought a couple of seedless watermelon's and threw them in the fridge for a few days as some of our family was coming this weekend. I confess, we do not buy watermelon often, and I was out of watermelon pickles so I decided to kill two birds with one stone so to speak and make watermelon pickles.

I will say this, of all the pickle type recipes, this one probably has the most prep, but the sweet, candied fruit pickles that you get from the rind that most people simply throw away is quite delicious. Now I won't claim that this is an old southern recipe as my grandmother used to make them on the farm in Missouri and her's were simply heaven. Having said that, this is not her recipe, I wish it was, but to be honest my father's mother never taught me anything about canning. It's a shame really as they canned just about anything you could think of back on the old home place, and she was quite good at it.

Anyway, I was left to try and develop my own version of this old fashioned family favorite. After trying several different variations, I took components from several recipes and fine tuned it to meet my specific needs. I must say that I am quite happy this watermelon pickle recipe. I generally make two small batches some with the red hot candies (which both my wife and I like) and some without. If you have never made watermelon pickles before, I hope you will give this recipe a try, I am sure you will enjoy it.

The Recipe (Yield 14 pints)

Rind from two medium to large sized watermelons

9 cups of granulated sugar

4 quarts of water

4 quarts vinegar (5% acidity)

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon whole cloves

1 3-inch piece of cinnamon

1 (5.5 ounce) bag of Red Hots cinnamon flavored candy (optional)

Make the brine and set in the refrigerator (see recipe below)

Remove the meat of the watermelon and place in plastic bowls for eating later. Make sure you remove as much of the meat as possible, however you do not have to scrape the rind down to the white part, some red is all right. Then slice the watermelon rind into 1-inch strips and peel the skin off with a potato peeler or small paring knife.

Once you have the watermelon rind peeled, cut into 1-inch cubes, or you could leave it as spears, but personally I think the cubes work best. Once you have all the rind cubed add it to the stockpot with the brine and then cover the top of the rind with ice (about 2 quarts) and place in the refrigerator for 4 hours.

After 4 hours or when you are ready (not longer than 12 hours). Combine the 4 quarts of vinegar and water along with the 9 cups of sugar and the lemon juice in a large stockpot and place it on high heat. While the syrup mixture is heating combine the cloves, and cinnamon in a small piece of cheesecloth to make a spice bag (sachet) and add it to the stockpot with the syrup solution. Bring the syrup to a boil and cook for ten minutes. Then reduce the heat just to simmer to keep the syrup warm. Remove the spice bag at this time, or if you like a stronger cinnamon clove flavor leave it in. At this time it is also a good idea to fill your water bath canner with water and get it heating. You do not what to waiting on a cold water bath canner once you rind is ready to be canned.

Remove the watermelon rind from the refrigerator and drain and rinse the thoroughly. Then after rinsing your stockpot, place the rinds back in the stockpot and cover with water and bring to a boil and cook for about 8 to 10 minutes. At this point the rind will be fork tender and just beginning to turn transparent. I personally like my rind to be just beginning to turn transparent when I remove it from the heat and start canning it as it will continue to cook from the residual heat of the water in the stockpot. Many recipes however tell you to cook the rind until it is totally transparent, but remember it will continue to cook some in the water bath canner so do not overcook the rind.

While the rind is cooking take your clean jars and add 3 cloves to each jar and 8 red hot cinnamon flavored candies (if your are using them) to each jar. Don't forget to heat your lids and bands and have them ready so that you can put the rind in the jars as soon as it is cooked. When the rind is ready fill your pint jars with the cooked rind and ladle the hot syrup into the jars leaving ½-inch of headspace. Remove any bubbles, adjust the two-piece lids and process in your 10 minutes in your boiling water bath canner.

The Brine

3 Quarts of water

¾ cup of salt

Combine 3 quarts of water and ¾ cup of salt in a large stockpot and stir until dissolved and place in the refrigerator to cool. You can make the brine overnight and allow to cool if you wish.

Conclusion

Of all the fruit pickle recipes, watermelon rind pickles are my favorite. It still amazes me that something like the rind of a watermelon when made into a fruit pickle using this recipe has the texture similar to that of canned apples or pears. In fact my first memory of eating these pickles in my grandmother's kitchen was that of eating canned apples. For just a little of your time and some basic ingredients that just about everyone has in their pantry you can make a delicious old fashioned fruit pickle recipe that is enjoyed by all generations. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and don't forget to send us a friend request on Facebook and Google+ so that you will not miss out on any of our new articles.