Can I cold pack salsa?

Dace

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I love fresh style salsa and made a large batch. Every recipe that I find online is hot pack...I really would rather cold pack it to preserve as much of the fresh texture as possible.

Can anyone advise??
 

coopy

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I am not sure what you mean by hot pack. I always cold pack my salsa. I use a canner (not a pressure cooker) to can my salsa. Is that what you mean?
 

curly_kate

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I would love to know if that's possible. I have a fantastic recipe for fresh salsa that I am never able to save. I've tried freezing it, and that pretty much ruins it. Luckily, with the amount of acid in the salsa, it lasts for a long time in the fridge.
 

Dace

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coopy said:
I am not sure what you mean by hot pack. I always cold pack my salsa. I use a canner (not a pressure cooker) to can my salsa. Is that what you mean?
Hot pack - heat processing the food item to be canned and then putting hot food into hot jars to be canned.
Cold pack - raw packing...not heating the food first before it goes into a jar, packing in cold/raw food to then be canned.
 

patandchickens

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You could try it (be very careful of the pH-vs-spoilage issue, for recipes not formally tested for canning, though).

HOWEVER I would have to guess that any sort of salsa fresca - pico de gallo - type thing is likely to get pretty soft and wet and weird just from the heat of processing. Not everything *can* be canned with impunity, unfortunately.

Good luck,

Pat
 

coopy

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I see what you are saying now. I have never "cold packed" as you call it. I however do not let my tomatoes get mushy either.
Do you have a Ball Blue Canning Book? This is a great book for answering questions on canning. You can also go to their website. Sorry I am no help to you.
 

me&thegals

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I always cold pack my salsa and tomatoes. To keep it all less juicy, I let it drain for a long time and them keep skimming the extra juice off the top since it all gets more juicy when doing the canning stage. No problems. I think it's most important to keep the acidity up if you've added veggies to your salsa and to keep the salt in the right proportion. Good luck :)
 

averytds

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I could be wrong, but my understanding between the whole hot pack/raw pack issue had more to do with final appearance and amounts than anything else. Hot packing the food is pre shrunk, so you can fit more into the jar and will have less floaters. After processing the jar will still be full. Raw pack the finished product will have shrunk in the jar, so the jar will have less in it and reflect that in appearance.

So you should consider the added costs and time of processing/using more jars etc. vs hot packing.

Whole tomatoes I usually raw pack and my crammed full jar appears only about 3/4 full after processing. It's worth it to me.

If you follow an approved recipe on amounts and acidification and if you're not planning to enter it in the fair, I say raw pack and I wouldn't worry about it.
 

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