The BEST Salsa Canning Recipe | Easy Homemade Salsa

This post may contain affiliate links, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read our disclosure policy for details.

This is the BEST salsa canning recipe I have made, and I think it is officially the only one I’ll be making from now on.

It is thick, full of flavor, and has just enough heat from the jalapeños. It tastes like the kind of salsa you actually want to open up with a bag of tortilla chips, not just another jar you need to use up from the pantry.

And possibly my favorite part? I don’t peel the tomatoes.

Everything gets chopped or tossed into the blender or food processor, added to a big stockpot, and simmered until the salsa reaches the thickness you like.

If your garden is overflowing with tomatoes right now, you can also preserve them with my canned tomato sauce recipe or easy canned diced tomatoes.

This recipe makes approximately 6 to 7 pint jars, but I usually make a double batch when the garden is producing heavily.

Two jars of homemade tomato sauce on a wicker plate, surrounded by garlic, tomatoes, a bell pepper, and more jars on a checkered cloth and marble surface.

Why You’ll Love This Salsa Canning Recipe

There are a lot of salsa recipes out there, but this one checks all the boxes for me.

No peeling tomatoes
Uses fresh garden vegetables
Thick and scoopable
Full of flavor
A little heat without being overwhelmingly spicy
Easy to chop everything in a food processor or blender
Makes 6 to 7 pints
Can be doubled for a larger batch
Perfect for stocking the pantry for winter

It is also a great recipe for those late summer days when tomatoes, peppers, onions, and garlic are all coming out of the garden at once.

Ingredients

One thing I love about this recipe is that it uses basic ingredients that are usually coming out of the garden at the same time.

Tomatoes: You’ll need 10 cups of peeled tomatoes. Ripe, meaty tomatoes are especially nice for salsa because they contain less water, but you can use the tomatoes you have growing in the garden.
Green peppers: These add that classic pepper flavour without adding much heat.
Jalapeños: Three jalapeños give the salsa a little kick. The heat can vary quite a bit from one pepper to another.
Onions: You’ll need 3 cups of chopped onion. They cook down as the salsa simmers and add plenty of flavour.
Garlic: I use 7 to 10 cloves because I like a garlicky salsa. This is definitely not the place for one lonely clove of garlic!
Tomato paste: This helps create the thick, rich salsa texture I was looking for. In a pinch you can use a thicker tomato sauce too!
Vinegar and bottled lemon juice: These provide acidity in a canned salsa. Because acidity is an important part of safe water-bath canning, these aren’t ingredients I would reduce or leave out.
Cumin, salt and black pepper: Simple seasonings that give the salsa a deeper, savoury flavour.
Sugar: Just ¼ cup helps balance the acidity of the tomatoes and vinegar without making the finished salsa taste sweet.

What You’ll Need

You don’t need anything fancy to make homemade canned salsa, but having a few good canning tools makes the process much quicker.

Equipment

Clean kitchen towels
Large stockpot for cooking down the salsa
Blender for quickly breaking down the tomatoes
Food processor for chopping peppers, onions, and garlic
Water bath canner
Mason jars
Canning lids and rings
Canning funnel
Jar lifter
Ladle
Measuring cups and spoons
Sharp kitchen knife
Cutting board

Nine jars filled with chunky red sauce are arranged in a neat grid on a blue and white checkered tablecloth, viewed from above.

The Best Tomatoes for Canning Salsa

One of the best things about making salsa during tomato season is using what is already growing in the garden.

You can use fresh tomatoes from your garden, but meatier tomatoes will usually give you a thicker salsa.

Paste tomatoes like Roma, San Marzano, and Amish Paste have more flesh and less water than many slicing tomatoes. This means there is less liquid that needs to cook away.

If you’re deciding what varieties to grow specifically for preserving, I have a full guide on the best tomatoes for canning.

You can still use juicier tomatoes. Your salsa may simply need a little more time simmering on the stove to reach the thickness you want.

Do You Have to Peel Tomatoes for Salsa?

No. I don’t peel the tomatoes for this salsa recipe.

This is one of the reasons I love making it.

Peeling tomatoes can easily turn a simple preserving project into an all-afternoon job. For this recipe, I wash and cut the tomatoes before putting them straight into the blender.

The tomatoes are blended and then simmered with the other ingredients, so I don’t mind having the skins in the finished salsa.

If skipping the peeling and blanching steps sounds like your kind of preserving, you might also like my easy crushed cherry tomatoes.

Four steps of making a blended vegetable sauce in a pot: 1. Blended tomatoes, 2. Added chopped onions, celery, and garlic, 3. Added spices and salt, 4. Ingredients mixed into a textured sauce.

Instructions

This salsa is surprisingly simple to put together, especially if you let your blender and food processor do most of the chopping.

Wash and cut the vegetables: Wash the tomatoes, peppers, jalapeños, and any other vegetables you’ve brought in from the garden. Remove the stems and roughly chop everything into pieces that will fit easily into your blender or food processor. There is no need to peel the tomatoes.
Blend the tomatoes: Add the tomatoes to your blender and pulse until they reach the consistency you like. I like having some texture left rather than completely liquefying them. Pour the blended tomatoes into a large stockpot.
Chop the peppers, onions, and garlic: Add the green peppers, jalapeños, onions, and garlic to your food processor. Pulse until everything is finely chopped. You can control the final texture here. For a chunkier salsa, leave the vegetables slightly larger. For a smoother salsa, process them a little longer. Add everything to the stockpot with the tomatoes.
Add the remaining ingredients: Add the tomato paste, salt, black pepper, cumin, sugar, vinegar, and lemon juice to the stockpot. Stir everything together well. At this point, your kitchen is going to start smelling GOOD.
Simmer the salsa: Bring the salsa to a simmer. Allow it to simmer until it reaches your preferred thickness. The longer it cooks, the deeper the flavor becomes and the thicker the salsa will get. I like mine thick enough that it actually stays on a tortilla chip instead of immediately running off. Stir occasionally as it cooks, especially as the salsa begins to thicken.
Prepare canning jars: While the salsa is simmering, prepare your jars and water bath canner. Keep the jars warm until you’re ready to fill them.
Fill jars with salsa: Once the salsa has reached the consistency you want, ladle the hot salsa into your prepared canning jars using a canning funnel. Leave the 1/4 inch of headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars clean with white vinegar and add the lids and rings.
Process: Place the jars into your water bath canner. Process pint jars for 20 minutes. If using quart jars, process for 25 minutes. Once the processing time is complete, remove the jars from the canner and place them upright on a towel.
Rest and storage: Let the jars sit undisturbed at room temperature for 24 hours. After 24 hours, remove the rings, check the seals, label the jars, and move them to your pantry or canning room for storage.

homestead kitchen

Get My Freezer Plans

If cooking from scratch sounds good in theory but feels hard to keep up with, these freezer plans are meant to help. They focus on simple prep, realistic portions, and meals you’ll actually use, so your freezer becomes a quiet support on busy days, not another project to manage.

Get the freezer plans

How to Make Homemade Salsa Thicker

If your homemade salsa seems watery at first, don’t panic.

Fresh tomatoes contain a lot of water. As the salsa simmers, some of that moisture will cook away.

A few things help create a thicker salsa:

Use meatier paste tomatoes when possible.
Add the tomato paste called for in the recipe.
Let the salsa simmer longer.
Avoid completely liquefying the vegetables.
Leave the pot uncovered while the salsa reduces.

This is another reason I love growing tomatoes specifically for preserving. A meaty tomato can save quite a bit of cooking time later.

Can You Double This Salsa Recipe?

Yes. I like making a double batch when I have a lot of tomatoes ready at once.

One batch makes approximately 6 to 7 pints, so doubling it is a great option during the busiest part of tomato season.

Just make sure you have a stockpot large enough to comfortably hold everything with enough room for stirring and simmering.

This is also where having a large food processor comes in handy. Processing all those peppers and onions by hand gets old very quickly!

Tips for the BEST Homemade Salsa

This salsa is pretty simple to make, but there are a few things I’ve found make the process easier and give you a better finished salsa:

Label everything. Once the jars have cooled for 12–24 hours and you’ve checked the seals, remove the rings and add the name and year. It makes keeping the canning shelves organized so much easier.

Use ripe tomatoes. This is the perfect recipe for using up a big basket of ripe garden tomatoes at the end of summer. If you still have more than you can use, you can freeze tomatoes to deal with another day.

Use a food processor to save time. You can absolutely chop everything by hand, but when I’m processing a lot from the garden at once, I don’t mind taking a shortcut. Pulse the vegetables until they’re chopped to the consistency you like rather than completely puréeing them.

Give it time to simmer. You can start checking the salsa after about an hour, but I really like the flavour and texture after it has had more time to cook down.

Stir more often as it thickens. Once some of that liquid cooks away, the salsa is more likely to stick to the bottom of the pot. Keep an eye on it toward the end.

Don’t skip the tomato paste. It gives the salsa a richer tomato flavour and helps create that thick, scoopable texture.

Prepare your canning supplies ahead of time. I like having my jars and canner ready before the salsa reaches the consistency I want. Then I can go straight from the stockpot into the jars.

A close-up of glass jars filled with homemade tomato sauce on a wicker tray, with garlic bulbs and a checked cloth nearby.

Can I Change the Ingredients in Canning Salsa?

This is one area where I wouldn’t get too creative.

With regular cooking, I’m usually all for adjusting a recipe to suit what you have. Canning is different because the balance between tomatoes, vegetables and acid is part of what makes a tested recipe safe for water-bath canning.

So while you can make certain seasoning adjustments, don’t reduce the vinegar or bottled lemon juice or increase the amount of onions or peppers unless the tested recipe you’re following specifically allows it.

If you want to experiment with completely different vegetable proportions, make the salsa for the refrigerator or freezer instead of canning it.

How to Make the Salsa More or Less Spicy

Jalapeños can vary quite a bit in heat, so every batch may taste slightly different.

For a milder salsa, removing the seeds and membranes from your jalapeños can help tame some of the heat. For a little more kick, leave them in.

Just remember that when you’re making salsa for canning, you shouldn’t simply add extra peppers beyond the amount called for in the tested recipe. It’s better to adjust the heat through the peppers themselves or add extra hot sauce when you open the jar.

Two glass jars filled with chunky red salsa are placed on a woven mat, with tomatoes and a green pepper in the background. The jars are sealed with metal lids and show visible herbs and vegetables inside.

Ways to Use Homemade Canned Salsa

Obviously, there’s the classic bowl of salsa and tortilla chips, but that’s definitely not the only reason I like having these jars tucked away.

We use it for tacos, nachos, quesadillas (using my homemade sourdough tortillas), burrito bowls, scrambled eggs and easy taco-style casseroles. You can also spoon it over chicken or add a jar to a slow cooker meal when you need an easy dinner.

That’s really why I love preserving food like this. The work happens while everything is abundant in the garden, and months later you’ve got something homemade sitting on the shelf ready to make an ordinary winter meal a little easier.

How to Store Home-Canned Salsa

Once your salsa has finished processing, carefully remove the jars from the canner and place them somewhere they won’t be disturbed.

Let the jars sit at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours without moving them or tightening the rings. Once they’re completely cool, check each seal.

Remove the screw bands before storing, wipe down the jars if needed and label each one with the name and date.

Store your sealed jars somewhere cool, dark and dry, such as a pantry or canning room. For the best quality, plan to use your home-canned salsa within about a year.

Once you open a jar, keep it in the refrigerator.

If you’re working on filling your shelves for winter, you might also like storing potatoes in sand and all of my other food preservation recipes.

FAQ

For this recipe I don’t peel them since I use a blender before adding them to the stockpot.

Meaty paste tomatoes, such as Roma or San Marzano, are especially nice because they contain less water and give you a naturally thicker salsa. But use whatever you have! I used a mix of Roma, Black Krim, and Early Girl tomtatoes that I grew in my garden from West Coast Seeds.

Tomatoes naturally contain a lot of water, especially slicing varieties.

That’s one reason I use tomato paste in this recipe and give the salsa plenty of time to simmer. As it cooks uncovered, excess moisture evaporates and the salsa becomes thicker.

Mine can simmer anywhere from 1 to 4 hours depending on the tomatoes I’m using and how thick I want that particular batch.

Join the List

Want More Simple Recipes & Seasonal Inspiration?

Get cozy, from-scratch recipes, seasonal homesteading tips, and simple living inspiration delivered straight to your inbox.

Join the list

More Ways to Preserve the Garden

Two mason jars filled with a chunky red sauce are placed on a wicker tray, with fresh tomatoes and peppers in the background.

No ratings yet

The BEST Homemade Salsa Canning Recipe

This easy homemade salsa canning recipe is made with fresh tomatoes, peppers, jalapeños, onions, garlic, and plenty of flavor. Even better, there is no need to peel the tomatoes! Make a batch during tomato season and stock the pantry with homemade salsa for winter.

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time:30

Cook Time:4

Processing Time:20

Course: Canning, Snack

Cuisine: American, Mexican

Keyword: best salsa recipe for canning, canning salsa with fresh tomatoes, homemade canned salsa, salsa canning recipe, salsa canning recipe without peeling tomatoes, water bath canning salsa

Servings: pints