Just look down the page at Greatest Hit Recipes . . . You'll see what you need.

Carol

Why not take any of the approved spicy salsa recipes like Tomato and Green Chile Salsa and then puree it trough a food mill and can it following the approved recipe.

If you don't care for it, the Ball Complete Book has several good Seasoned and/or Spicy sauce recipes in it. Just keep in mind it will get stronger over time. ;) That's why we prefer making just the basic marinara sauce and then spicing as desired when serving.

Dave

Well seasoned?? A recipe?? No. But your imagination, taste buds, and a whole lot of compatible spices can help. Obviously basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, garlic, peppers, onions, and even a dash of Baslamic vinegar, or a bit of spicy heat too?. Its all going to depend on what you like as the final taste. Making it all the same taste and strong flavored, may give you less 'creativess' later on when you open a few jars. I like making a few batchs of stewed tomatoes. Not quite an italian sauce, but instead, celery, onions, and peppers. Is good on most anything and if you want an 'italian direction', simply add any Italian type herbs you prefer. There must be a millon recipes out there for sauce. I like mine thick too.

I like lots of garlic, but I gather that one can't add fresh garlic with impunity to canning recipes - am I mistaken? If I wanted to swap out some of the onion for more garlic, is it an equal-measure swap?

I intend to can up some "plain" tomatoes for when I want to get creative, but a good basic "scare the Vampires" sauce would be a terrific once-in-a-while treat around here. We don't really eat that much pasta.

Also, does roasted garlic have the same acidity as raw garlic, when added to sauce for canning?

I don't mean to be a pain; I just don't want to open a jar of sauce that I labored over just to go "eh", if you know what I mean... most commercial sauces (restaurants included) taste quite bland to me. I'm one of those who usually can't find the garlic in restaurant "garlic bread".

So you want something more highly seasoned and with more garlic than the Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce?

Carol

Because its canned in a pressure canner and reqiuires VERY necessary added acid. its quite safe from the beginning. Unless it was a really LARGE amount of garlic (half cup per quart??). Even for that, I pickle garlic all the time, but in vinegar brine. Roasting the garlic will reduce not only some of the heat, but also mellow the flavor. I would expect that you could have about a half cup of garlic in a sauce, along with the necessary acid (citric). Density can become an issue if its really loaded with solids, so be careful. I also like using dried herbs and onions, etc. as they do not contribute any water, but instead, soak up the acidic liquid. Salt is important as is the way the sauce is made in the beginning. There are many recent post here about the best food strainer. These machines can crush up whole tomatoes, remove all skins and seeds and give you pure pulp and juice in seconds. I use many types of tomatoes, mostly plum or paste types. I HATE watery sauces!! When I run them thorough the strainer, I usually cut them in halves, first, and scoop out most of the gel and seeds. Doing so helps to reduce the extra water, and they cook up to thicker sauce much faster.

Yes, Carol - I haven't tried that recipe, but I've cooked a lot of pasta sauces over the years and to me, 3 cloves of garlic to 8c tomatoes (plus all the rest) is nowhere near enough garlic. I like the basic ingredient list (sans the sugar, and is the paste really necessary?), i.e. the wine and the red wine vinegar, onions and basil - but I've been known to use half a bulb of garlic in one meal's worth of fresh sauce (about a quart), usually half roasted and chunky and half left a bit sharper but finely minced, and my family loves it.

Thanks, Roger - I plan to get a food strainer like the one you recommend so highly. How much garlic is too much, from a safety standpoint - is there any way to know? If I was going to start with the Chunky Basil sauce, how much garlic can I conceivably add safely? Not saying that I necessarily would push the envelope that far, but... I only want to frighten vampires, not poison my family. ;-)

Roger, to clarify - when you said "I would expect that you could have about a half cup of garlic in a sauce, along with the necessary acid (citric)" did you mean a half cup for a large canning batch, or a single meal's worth of sauce? I realize that I am asking you to conjecture, but I'm willing to trust your gut on this, not to mention the rest of you Jedi Canning Masters. :-)

That is a very intense pasta sauce, but it's the flavors of basil and wine that predominate.

Sugar isn't necessary. Paste increases acidity. That recipe is very finely balanced for water bath canning and I wouldn't recommend cutting the paste. In many recipes it's optional but I'm not convinced in this case that it is.

The only way you could do a pasta sauce with the amount of fresh garlic you want is to pressure can and I couldn't begin to speculate as to a processing time. It would be irresponsible to venture a guess.

I don't remember if I suggested it for this recipe or another but one safe way to boost the garlic flavor with a stable and safe product is to supplement the fresh garlic with dehydrated garlic flakes. They could be bundled in cheesecloth and then strained out after cooking, if desired.

Otherwise, I think you'll be better off freezing your sauce rather than canning, given the amount of fresh garlic you want.

One other factor to keep in mind, even if such large amounts of garlic were possible in a home-canned product, is that there could well be undesireable flavor changes during the canning process. Fresh garlic is volatile. All kinds of unpleasant things can happen when the intense heat of the pressure process is applied to herbs, spices, and flavor agents like alliums.

There's nothing worse than expending the effort for a large batch of sauce only to discover that 90% of the flavor has been leached by heat or that the careful balance of flavors has been destroyed by unexpected bitterness in one of the seasonings.

Carol

Robin, use an approved recipe, and then when you're getting ready to top your pasta with it, start by sauteeing as many cloves of pressed garlic as you like in a bit of olive oil. Then add your canned sauce to the sauteed garlic.

Roger?? Who is Roger??
The half cup of garlic would be added to a SINGLE quart jar! As stated the necessary added acid must also be used, as tomatoes alone cannot always guarantee a high acid content by themselves. A pressure canning would definately be needed for his amount of garlic, and so would maybe a good pound of breath mints! What more can I say about garlic. Pickled whole, packed in jars, and only sitting in a salt, water, and vinegar brine. The mellowness of garlic shows up once its exposed to some heat and a 'curing' in vinegaror strong acid. One thing about basil too, is that I found that THAT does cause some changes to taste once in a sauce and canned. I made a sauce with a LOT of fresh basil added. It tasted really good fresh, but after canning made the sauce turn a bit brown and odd tasting. Usually basil is one of those you add at reheating time. For me, a tomato paste isn't enough, I use a granulated dry tomato instead of a paste, if I want it to really be thick. The sugar added, is sometimes used just to reduce acidic sharpness. Yes, I agree that the added items might be better textured if made at the time of serving and added at the last minute.. So we now have gone full circle and are back to a basic sauce. Tomato sauces made right, always seem to be more flavorful the next day anyway.

Sometimes we all need to remind ourselves that the goal/purpose of home canning isn't convenience much less prep ahead convenience. It's purpose is preservation of the basic ingredients that aren't available later so they can be used in cooking. ;)

Garlic, like olives, is one of the botulism prone ingredients that can't be safely "adjusted" in quantity or processing. So it should not be used except in tested and approved recipes and the directions followed to the letter when processing. You can always buy jars of diced, already processed garlic and just add it to any basic sauce at serving time.

Dave

Gosh, Dave, I would think we would all be allowed to have our own purposes! Mine is often convenience. Apples keep very well and I could make applesauce in February if I wanted, but I don't---I make a lot of it in October because I love just opening a jar.

I totally get what robin wants and why. And I would probably substitute garlic for onion on a weight basis (i.e., weigh the amount of chopped onion and substitute with that amount of chopped garlic, since garlic tends to get chopped so much smaller that volume amounts wouldn't be at all comparable) and feel pretty safe.

Garlic seems to me a very different thing from olives, which are a very oily fruit. Garlic is an allium and has cooking properties a whole lot like onions.

But that's just me. I would not claim certainty about the pH of such a product, or tell others to can it. But I would do it and feel a lot safer than I do crossing the street any day of the week.

Zabby

I personally often can for convenience. I love making green tomato salsa because I can open a jar and make a fast great dinner. Ditto on the applesauce thing that Zabby said.

That being said if I wanted a lot of garlic in my homecanned sauce I would make a basic sauce and add it at the time of serving. I still find it more convenient to add garlic at the end and then there is no risk of botulism or the garlic tasting off later. Personally I prefer the basic sauce that only needs a little citric acid as the ones with lots of vinegar are not quite right for my palate.

-Robin

Ken, do you buy the granulated dry tomato, or dehydrate your own? I'd love a source for it if you buy it. I bought some tomato powder many moons ago and found it most useful--but haven't been able to find it since.

I assumed Robin wanted lots of onions also, so didn't suggest doing anything with those.

mom2wildboys, I know Ken has a preferred source he will suggest.

If you would like to price-compare, here's where I buy it. I can dry and grind my own in a good year, but a commercial source is handy. The last three garden years here the tomatoes have not developed the kind of full flavor I'd hoped for. Not enough sun.

Carol

Here is a link that might be useful: Dehydrated Tomato Powder and Flakes

Ken, my apologies - it was late when I typed that and I picked "Roger" from your user name, even though I know your name is Ken. It was a brain fart. I am definitely interested in trying dried tomatoes and peppers - I assume they don't alter the Ph? What about garlic flakes - are they Ph-neutral?

Carol, I was thinking along the lines of swapping some of the onions for garlic, although the recipe doesn't have that much onion to begin with, all things considered.

Dave, for me canning is very much about convenience. Prepared foods (whether home canned or store bought) are for those days when I'm too busy or DH is working late and I just don't want to bother with "from scratch" cooking, or for taking with us when we go on our fishing vacations. It's also a way to keep food that won't go bad if the power goes out for any length of time (perish the thought). It's also, for me, a way to preserve food that's purchased when it's sold cheaply for eating when it's sold dear, and I've been far too reliant on my two freezers, hence the canning.

Thanks, Zabby! I think I'll most likely just make the recipe as written and add garlic before heating, but I was really hoping I could make at least one thing that is perfect right out of the dang jar, without needing to add stuff before serving. :-(

You're right, other-Robin (grin) - better safe than sorry.

Oh well, I'm sure that whichever approved recipe I use will still be far better than anything from the store.

Thanks for the link, Carol!

It isn't the pH per se. With the dehydrated flakes you don't have water. Ambient water is a factor in botulism. That's one reason why some low-acid mixtures with lots of sugar can be safer than those without sugar. Sugar is a dessicant and binds the water botulism spores need.

It's why you can use dried herbs in an infused oil much more safely than fresh and why dried peppers in pickles don't present the issues fresh ones do.

Basically you could add just about as much dried garlic as you want to. I suppose there's a limit at some point in terms of density, but the garlic flakes are absorbing the wine or other acids instead of water, so it's much safer. And dehydrated garlic is still a natural product.

I like garlic too and always keep a jar of Costco's garlic flakes on hand. They're great heated in milk and then strained out for mashed potatoes. The two of us just don't use enough fresh garlic in cooking to justify buying one of the big jars of the peeled cloves and sometimes the heads of garlic aren't good enough quality for me to want to buy them.

Carol

> I assumed Robin wanted lots of onions also, so didn't suggest doing anything with those.

Well, lots of onion AND garlic is probably ideal! ;-p

Zabby

My ex-husband used to can loads and loads of tomato sauce full of low-acid stuff. I don't know how we didn't die of food poisoning back then. I'm glad I found this forum because I just got back into serious canning again after 20 years. I know now that that was dangerous but didn't then so happily simmered the sauce for maybe 5 minutes and ate away. We also canned plain peeled tomatoes so I could make fresh sauce a little different each time. That's what I plan to do now. I will add the garlic, onions etc. fresh each time I open a can. To give sauce some "spice and pizazz" I add a few shakes of "Chef Paul Prudhomme's Herbal Pizza and Pasta Magic." I personally like to just can the toms plain and make the sauce fresh each time. No flavor changes from the heat of canning.

Gosh, Dave, I would think we would all be allowed to have our own purposes! Mine is often convenience.

Perhaps I could have said it better. ;) Of course there is an element of convenience to it - but Zabby you have to agree that canning applesauce is very different from dealing with garlic. NCHFP gives us a list of potentially hazardous foods that must be handled with extra care: olives and garlic are both on that list along with oil, dairy products, mushrooms, summer squash etc.

But my point was that many take that convenience aspect too far and I seriously believe that one can easily get into dangerous territory if the primary focus is one of convenience. When that happens there is a tendency to sacrifice safety for convenience.

Thus the frequent posts we get on "is this safe to can", why can't I can this recipe", "how can I convert this cooking recipe to a canning recipe" and all the discussions on changing ingredients in approved recipes.

If instead, we recognize that safe, tested, basic recipes for most things are readily available and that all of these items can be further perfected at serving time (and still be quite convenient as most of the work is done) then we keep the focus where it should be - on safety.

Dave

Bulk foods has the tomato powder in many amounts, as well as the calcium chloride, citric, dried soup greens, and so many old timey candies, granolas, dried fruits.. etc... I love their sugarless turtles, caramel, pecans, and chocolate. All kinds of stuff there, and the tomato power is free flowing. I keep it in the fridge, as it can darken a bit if left out a long time. Also get a lot of other stuff like starch, powdered eggs and whites and all sorts of goodies. Where else are youb going to find Japanese style peanuts. These are coated with a sslightly sweet/salty soy, and are hard to stop eating. Remember Mary Janes and maple nuts, Kits, rock candy, 2 1/4 inch jaw breakers! You wil go nuts! (pardon the pun)

Your right Zabby.. For dried garlic and onion in tomato sauces I tried a dried, sliced, roasted garlic from somewhere, but it was unpleasant tasting . I use the dried minced and granulated stuff , even sweet pepper flakes and because its dry it soaks up the tomato liquids as well as absorbing the necessary acid. Has never failed me yet.. Garlic, is perfectly safe to can by itself is its pickled in a vinegar salt brine. Like eating peanuts, you just can stop ourself., I used to make quart jars for a friend who would go through a jar in a couple of weeks, and used it in almost everything.

Placs like Costco and BJ's used to carry the granulated onions and garlic and smome minced. But both seem to now only offer powders (which clump!) and chopped.

Here's my favorite source for these now. Used to also get stuff from the Ingredient Store for many years, but the original owner has recently passed away, just 2 weeks after we had a nice converastion about his efforts in the food industry for 50 years. His kids are running the business for now, but are just too busy to effectivly run it with as many selections of items. Its still the ONLY place I can find the modified food starch called FREEZER FLOW, which is even more stable once cooked and frozen and refrozen if needed. Freezer Flow's nicest property is it will still hold up better to high acid foods and freezing that tend to break down a little in Clear Gel. The same people make FAB marinades, for beef, pork and poultry. These mixes are added to water and injected or marinated. Some of the secret recipes of BBQ people use it. Then there is the '11 herbs and spices', which is about as close to KFC as you can get.

Unless the Prudhomme stuff is cheap at a local Christmass tree shop, I just use what I like. Big jars of italian seasoning, dried peppers and onion, basil, garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, savory and a few others. Goes well with almost any italian things, inlcuding adding to bread dough, and pizza doughs. Nothing like crusty bread for dipping in an olive oil and balsamic vinegar with herbs added.. Don't get me started!!

Here is a link that might be useful: Bulk foods

Pasta sauce is an individual personality- some like it spicy, some sweet, some w/ peppers, some with mushrooms, some with wine, etc. For me, I like full flavor. Soo..

I know this sounds odd but when I make Annie's salsa I use the big industrial cans of diced tomatoes (SAMS club) since tomatoes in my area never go below $1/lb and we eat a LOT of salsa. I take the tomato juice left over in the cans and use it to make my pasta sauce. Then, I add carrots, onions, and whole heads of garlic and another half a can of the diced tomatoes that I brush w/ olive oil and roast at 400F for about an hour. (This is basically Katie's roasted tomato garlic soup recipe). Blend in a blender and add a can of chicken broth to the left-over tomato juice and I process quarts for 70 minutes at 11lb pressure. It is full of flavor and the tomato sauce is just thick enough. So easy to do after canning the salsa and then there is no waste of product since I cheat and use the tomatoes from the industrial-sized cans.
-Laura