Salsa! (the food, not the dance)

We have picked over 850 marcellino cherries so far this year, and we can only eat so much bruschetta, so we decided to make some salsa. The marcellino tomatoes are tangy and sweet and make such a good salsa! Actually, it is the best salsa I have ever eaten. I found a recipe on-line, then modified it for my personal preferences.

4 cups cherry tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
1/2 white onion
2 jalapeno peppers
1 tbsp white vinegar
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp salt

Measure four cups of cherry tomatoes.



Place the cherry tomatoes in a food processor.



Slowly pulse the tomatoes, taking care not to puree them.



Add your diced tomatoes to a bowl.



Select three smallish garlic cloves, or reduce the amount for your preference. I love garlic!



This garlic mincer from Pampered Chef is a must-have in our kitchen! Add the minced garlic to the tomato mixture.



Chop up 1/2 of a white onion. This hand-chopper helps speed up the chopping task that takes a knife so much longer to complete. Add the diced onion to the tomato mixture.



Seed your jalapenos, then chop them up with the hand-chopper too. I buy larger jalapenos, because they are more mild than the smaller ones. If you like your salsa hot, buy smaller jalapenos. If you like your salsa REALLY hot, add the jalapeno seeds! Add the diced jalapeno to the tomato mixture.



Finally, add the vinegar, lemon juice and salt to the tomato mixture. I don't have pictures of this. I guess I got distracted!

This recipe makes 2 pints of salsa. The recipe does scale properly if you double each measurement to make a larger batch.

We canned up 3 pints of the salsa using a cold-pack method and 30 minutes in the water bath. I think this was too long though, and I will be reducing the time with future batches. One of the cans had a bit of an explosion - eek! But it still seems to have sealed properly.