Sure you "can" but it isn't recommended or encouraged. The question comes up now and then and as a general guideline, re-canning any commercially canned product is not recommended. This is because they contain additives and stabilizers, because the double processing markedly reduces the flavor and quality, and it is a really inefficient use of your time and the energy used for processing given the end result. Your choice, but it would be far better to buy the large cans, parcel them up and freeze them. Dave

The simple easy answer to your questions would be no, you cannot can it because one of the foundation rules of safe home canning is "You cannot safely can your own made-up recipes because you have no idea what the density or the pH is so processing type and time cannot be calculated. Personal recipes should be frozen, not canned." That's the simple answer from the approved guidelines and it is strongly encouraged that new or inexperienced home canners abide by that guideline. Does everyone abide by that guideline? No. As long as you recognize and accept you are moving into a potentially risky area you are free to do as you wish within some limitations. While canning already canned food is not recommended for several reasons, it is possible. The pH with already canned tomato products is usually ok as they add citric acid. But the density is still a possible issue. So my first question would be what is the exact recipe you want to make with specific measurements? Otherwise as already mentioned, yes you can always leave out any low acid ingredients you don't want but you cannot substitute others for them. Sugar (except in jams/jellies) is normally optional and can be left out. In personal recipes oil should be eliminated whenever possible or at least kept to a very bare minimum. Wine helps the acidity level so is no problem. All the pre-cooking isn't relevant to the canning safety and has no effect on the processing time required. So density - the thickness of your sauce when it goes into the jar - is the big concern when it comes to determining the PC processing time. Hope this helps. Dave

"But actually it isn't all that difficult to know the approved ones as there are so few of them for spaghetti sauce since it is a low acid product. NCHFP/USDA publications, which includes the ones in So Easy to Preserve, and those in the Ball/Bernardin books. That's it. There aren't any in Small Batch Preserving." Well, it may not call itself spaghetti sauce, but there is "Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce" with fresh herbs and veges in Small Batch Preserving, and also "Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce" with both veges and fresh herbs in Small Batch Preserving, and also "Seasoned Tomato Sauce" with veges and fresh herbs that Small Batch Preserving suggests using in "pasta sauces, soups, stews, pizza, or casseroles." So, although the OP did leave the door open to reasonable questions about recipe safety, it is also good to take care in making broad statements about recipes which include such phrases as "there are no recipes which. . .", or "all approved recipes for (pasta sauce, salsa, whatever) MUST be. . ." since there may well be a safe recipe which allows such processing. For example: you CAN use fresh herbs in the approved NCHFP spaghetti sauce recipe, as this email from Elizabeth Andress states: Thank you for visiting the National Center for Home Food Preservation. > question -> Spaghetti Sauce without Meat: > 1. Can I eliminate the celery/peppers completely? > 2. Can I use fresh herbs or only dried? > 3. Can I add basil (fresh or dried)? > 4. Can I eliminate the sugar? For our particular procedures: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/spaghetti_sauce.html You can leave out the celery and peppers completely, leaving everything else the same. (The mushrooms are already optional, also.) If you use fresh herbs, make sure they are very clean. I can only recommend using the equivalent volume measures, though, and that may not give you the flavor you desire. Eg., instead of 2 TBSP dried oregano, use 2 TBSP minced fresh oregano. I do not have enough information to know the upper limit on how much fresh to add, so that's all I can suggest without testing. (which we cannot do). You can use basil as a substitute for one of the other herbs (eg, you may not want the parsley with basil). Or, if you are leaving out the celery and peppers completely, you could add 2 to 4 TBSP of basil. Yes, you can eliminate the sugar in this recipe. The chopped celery and/or peppers and the sugar add a little moisture/liquid in many recipes. In this particular sauce, however, it is cooked down to thickened consistency anyway, so the amount of liquid that would be added by these ingredients would not be important as it might be in other types of food products/mixtures. Best wishes, Elizabeth Andress -------------------------------------- Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D. Project Director, National Center for HFP Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist Department of Foods and Nutrition The University of Georgia 208 Hoke Smith Annex Athens, GA 30602-4356 Phone: (706) 542-3773 FAX: (706) 542-1979 -----------------------------------------------

I have canned tomatoes, but not tomato/spaghetti sauce. This past weekend, I picked a mess of tomatoes from the garden and decided to make tomato sauce for the freezer. I looked online and found lots of recipes/methods, but took the easy way out. I cored and quartered the tomatoes and cut out any bad spots, but I neither seeded nor skinned them. I just put them in the blender in batches, along with a couple of onions and some garlic, a bit of salt, some bell peppers and fresh basil. I could have added a lot of other things to make it more of a spaghetti sauce, but chose not to, because I might want to use the sauce for something that I didn't want to necessarily taste like marinara. Just cooked it for about 8 hours until it was the thickness I desired (less than half the volume before cooking), let it cool, and put it in freezer bags and plopped it in the freezer. That is, all except for enough for DH to make spaghetti the following day. And of course, he added lots of other "stuff" - he always does, which is why it wasn't necessary to put everything in the sauce. And I know that many would cringe at having skins and seeds in the sauce, but I ate the spaghetti last night and it was delicious. Not bitter at all. Just yummy. DH was impressed and said he thinks he's been ruined for store-bought sauce.