Chili Sauce

I harvested more tomatoes yesterday, a shopping bag of Italian Heirloom and one of John Baer. With the John Baer that were in the refrigerator from last week, we had about half a bushel. We now have a fair number of quarts of canned tomatoes. I thought it would be good to make something else. I remembered loving my mother's tomato chili sauce. Of course, it is always the case; the recipe you want from your mother went with her when she passed.

I found the following recipe on cooks.com.

1 peck tomatoes
9 green peppers
6 med. size onions
3 c. sugar
3/4 c. salt
1 doz. med. red peppers
1 qt. vinegar
3 tsp. cloves, ground
3 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. nutmeg
2 tsp. ginger

The half a bushel of tomatoes meant we had two pecks. Kathy wants one for straight tomato sauce. So I did the homemade chili sauce. I substituted 2 poblano peppers for the med. red peppers. Then cooked it for at least four hours. It yielded 10 pints.


If I were to do it again, i might cut the spices and vinegar a little. It is pretty strong stuff. And I don't think it is a full duplication of what my mother made, which was pretty mild by comparison. Still, a generally good use of extra tomatoes.

One last comment: This allowed us to compare the processing differences between the John Baer and Italian Heirloom varieties. The Italian Heirloom are much, much larger. But, they are also a bit more unwieldy. The skin of the John Baer just slips off when parboiled. The John Baer also have less pith in them, making it easier to keep most of the fruit when you take out the stem. They just don't grow as big. They also tend to bleach when they get too much sun.