Charcuterie, I've made this recipe many times and the amount I get varies from about six pints to about eight pints. I think it probably depends mostly on how watery the tomatoes are. Roma tomatoes are usually very meaty, and the fact that you got less than eight cups from 5 1/2 pounds suggests yours were quite meaty (I usually find about four pounds gives about eight cups). So my guess is that the liquid from the canned diced tomatoes is what made it have so much volume. If you had added more fresh tomatoes, they would have cooked down. Since the tomatoes you added were canned they were already cooked down, so they wouldn't have shrunk as much in cooking, if you see what I mean. I do think your salsa should be safe to eat. The added extra peppers is actually the one thing that goes against standard safety recommendations---peppers are a low-acid food, so if you have more peppers total compared to tomatoes than a recipe is tested for, you don't know for sure that it's acidic enough. But those cans of peppers in adobe are small, and you added extra acid, AND I know that Annie's recipe has a generous margin of error of extra acid. So while the standard answer is "you should never change anything in a tested recipe," I know that I, personally, would feel very happy eating your salsa. I'll be right over, in fact. ;-p Good luck, Zabby

Thanks, I ended up using about 30 habaneros and 20 jalapenos (this alone was 3.5 cups) and then used 2 cups of onions and green peppers. I added an extra cup and a half of 50-50 lime juice and apple cider vinegar (2.5 cups total). It did get a little runnier(not too bad though), but I thought I'd be safe rather than sorry. I thought it was nice, but my husband insists he still thinks that it just a medium heat salsa!!!!! So, since I seem to be falling further and further into canning, and because experimentation is fun for me I have another question. How is a recipe tested for safeness? I can easily get my hands on pH testing supplies. If the final recipe has a pH below 4.6, can I safely can using a 30 minute BWB? Is this something where I need to can and then test samples over a time period to test for botulism and microorganisms? Or is this something that I should be asking the area coop extension?

My soon-to-be son-in-law and I made 34 jars of it this weekend and it's very good. Quite a hit at work, so we'll probably have to make more in a few weeks. (!?) We made a double batch of mild and a single batch of spicy. I thought it was a tad too sweet, but I understand I can add lime juice to cut the sweetness next time. There's a lot of prep, I skinned and chopped 24 cups of tomatoes and cleaned the seeds and ribs from the peppers, he did the rest , so it's an all day operation, but it goes much faster with two. Enjoy

http://faq.gardenweb.com/discussions/2766092/annies-salsa-recipe Recipe is still here. Rodney