Canning Barbecue Sauce

   Many times people ask me about how to can this or that, why do I do what I do, etc.  This post is about barbecue sauce.  I can give you 11 very good reasons I can many things myself...they are our children.  My canned goods are no salt, no preservatives, no red #40, no sugar or very little and canned in glass not plastic.  You know as well as I do when the big companies take all of that out the price of the product goes through the roof.  So you can't compare my canning to the cheap things in the store.

     This sauce comes from The Complete Ball Book of canning...not the blue book.  I multiplied it by 10 to fit in the nesko roaster.  You'll need additional pans to keep cooking down the tomatoes.  I started off with 2 bushels of roma tomatoes from our garden.  The kids and I ran all the tomatoes through our sauce master and poured the sauce into the waiting pans/nesko.

     Sometimes things can get a little messy as you can see Karlie got a face full of tomato.  :D  Good times in the kitchen.  Cooking down the tomatoes could take 24 hours.  Please turn off burners and unplug the nesko if you are leaving the house or going to bed.  You'll be amazed as to how much will "cook off" even when it's not cooking.  Tomatoes stay HOT a long time.

     I add the spices when cooking is getting closer to completion.  I'll grind up the onions and garlic in a blender with the vinegar...makes life so much easier.  Add any sugar at the very end.  The sugar will make your tomato products burn easier so I wait until the end.  With this recipe I only added 2 c. of brown sugar...not all 20 c.!!!  Our family loves liquid smoke so I added some while cooking.  The aroma that filled the house had all of us drooling.

     So at the end of the day we just had to try our new sauce over meatballs.  It is spicy as I dumped in 1/2 c. of red pepper flakes but the recipe called for more when multiplied by 10.  It wasn't too bad and the taste was great.