Ghost Pepper Salsa (Revised)
Okay, so I decided I wanted one that was a bit hotter. This one has a lot more kick then the first recipe. This is based off of my last Ghost Pepper Salsa recipe, but this one has a lot more kick. I picked most of these ingredients or changes based on what we had grown last year in the garden.
Ingredients:
- 8 lbs fresh Tomotoes
- 1/2 cups chopped Thai Peppers (seeds and all)
- 1 cup chopped Bell Peppers
- 1/2 cup seeded and chopped fresh Jalapeno Peppers
- 3 Ghost Peppers, chopped, seeds and all
- 2 Carolina Reapers, chopped, seeds and all
- 2 Banana Peppers, chopped, seeds and all
- 2 cops chopped Onions
- 1/2 cup fresh squeezed Lemon Juice (I didn’t have lime juice here or I would have used that, didn’t seem to make too much of a difference)
- 1/2 cup White Vinegar
- 6 ounces Tomato Paste
- 6 or 8 cloves Garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon ground Cumin
- 1/2 tablespoon ground Black Pepper
- 3 teaspoons salt
The major change here is dropping the Anaheim peppers for the Thai Peppers. There are much less Thai Peppers, but Thai’s are about 15 times hotter than an Anaheim. With that, there’s a bit more Bell Pepper, a few other peppers, including the banana peppers for taste, a little more garlic, and 1 more ghost pepper.
Wash your tomatoes and remove the stems with a knife.
Fill a large pot with four or five inches of water and bring to a boil. With a slotted spoon place a few tomatoes at a time into the boiling water for about a minute, or until the skins start to crack and peel. The tomatoes should be completely submerged. Immediately put the tomatoes into a cold ice water bath to stop the cooking and then drain in a colander. The skin should slip off easily. (Note, instead of doing this, you could also just freeze the tomatoes, then place them in water (doesn’t need to be hot) and peel the skins off (I find this much easier).
Cut the skinned tomatoes in half then quarter each of the halves. Place a large colander in the sink and put the chopped tomatoes in it to drain off most of the juice.
When drained, place the tomatoes back into the large pot, dumping the water out first. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 1.5 hours. Stir it often to prevent burning.
During that 1.5 hours, get all of the rest of the ingredients chopped up and placed in a bowl. After the tomatoes are ready, add the remaining ingredients and bring it back up to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.
Spoon the warm ghost pepper salsa into warmed, sterilized canning jars, leaving a 1/2 inch of headspace. Wipe jar rims with a damp towel, place lids on the jars, and tighten by hand.
Place the filled jars in a water bath and bring it up to a boil. Leave them in the boiling bath for 15 minutes, then remove jars and place them on cooling racks. Any jar that fails to seal properly can be placed in the refrigerator and used fresh.
Note: You can use canned tomatoes that have already been peeled if this seems like too much work. However, you can’t beat the taste of fresh Ghost Pepper Salsa.