Aunt Connie's Taco Sauce

So, despite the evidence presented in my last post, I can occasionally get something right (even if it's just by dumb luck). In August I tried canning salsa for the first time, using my Aunt Connie's "Taco Sauce" recipe, with very pleasing results.

First, I worked with home-grown tomatoes - some from my own garden, and some from my grandparents.
I loved all the different colors.

The first step of the recipe is to peel the tomatoes, and left to my own devices this would have been a nightmare indeed. But my Aunt Connie is a crafty one, and seems to have a great sense of where the direction "peel tomatoes" would take me, so she provided this great little tip: slice an "x" into the skin of the tomatoes and then boil them until the skin softens. Pull them out of the water and when they cool the skin will slide off like magic. Awesome tomato magic.

After peeling the tomatoes it's a chop fest. I (very sloppily) sliced and diced the tomatoes, onion, and peppers.

I have no idea what kind of peppers I used. I put "hot peppers" on the grocery list, and the hubster came home with .... hot peppers. Our grocery store is pretty terrible about labeling produce, so even he doesn't know what I used. But they were kinda spicy and worked just fine.

With everything chopped and ready to go it was time for cooking. The produce went into the pot, followed by the tomato paste, salt, vinegar, sugar, and corn syrup.

When I first read the recipe that just seemed wrong. Really, Aunt Connie couldn't actually mean corn syrup, right?

Oh, it was right. And it was delicious.

With all the goods in the pot I simmered the salsa while preparing for waterbath canning, and from there it was your standard job: hot jars are filled with boiling salsa and capped, boiled for thirty minutes, and then left to sit for 24 hours on a towel.

And voila! Beautiful and slightly-sweet salsa that is perfect for munching. Yum.