Home Canning 103: Sloppy Joe "Chili" Sauce

Today I give you my second canning recipe: Chili Sauce. If you’ve ever had store-bought Sloppy Joe sauce, you may be more familiar with this so-called Chili Sauce than you think. No, there are no chilies in it, and no, it’s not spicy hot. In fact, I was raised with this as our one-and-only Sloppy Joe sauce and didn’t have the stuff from the metal can until I was in high school, at a friend’s house. Grandma has a similar story: She was raised using only this homemade sauce as ketchup, and says that once she and her sister started going to school and had bottled ketchup, they started begging her mother to buy some of that, too. I’ve never had the family Chili Sauce on fries, but I do go through quite a bit of it for Sloppy Joes. We made three batches of it simultaneously, and canned enough of it to last for the year. TIP: One batch makes about 4 pints by the time it has cooked down and thickened, and you could double this if you wanted to fill a canning pot. However, a canning pot only holds 7 pints, so if you have more, you could store the extra pint in the fridge and use it within a week or so. If you’re like us, you’ll use it straight out of the pot for dinner the same night.



Chili Sauce

5 ½ Quarts Tomato Juice (see below)
4 Cups chopped onions
3 Cups chopped green pepper
4 ½ Cups chopped celery
2 Tablespoons salt
2 Cups apple cider vinegar
3 Cups sugar
1 heaping Tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 heaping Tablespoon ground allspice



Notes on Tomato Juice: We make our tomato juice from scratch, and I can’t recommend using canned juice because we’ve just never done it. Plus, what we call “juice” is a little bit thicker than canned tomato “juice,” but it’s not as thick as tomato “sauce” in a can. I suppose you could always try it in a pinch. Making it ourselves gives us the added bonus of knowing where and how our produce was grown (in my grandparents’ backyard). However, we just use as many tomatoes as we have and turn it all into juice for chili sauce or whatever else, so we never start with a set recipe for 5 ½ quarts of juice. We’ve done some homework with other recipe books, and think 5-7 pounds of tomatoes would yield a proper amount of juice. This chili sauce recipe is very fluid and you can always use a little more or a little less of everything if you have more or less juice. Then again, you can season it to taste. TIP: If you hate green peppers, leave out the green peppers. Grandma’s sister likes hers very spiced, so she doubles her cinnamon and allspice and has a darker sauce. TIP: You will need a chinois and pestle for this project, or a food mill, but a chinois looks more durable and has less parts that could break down or wear out. We’ve always used a chinois, but we’d never called it that – it had always been a “colander” just like the bowl with holes in it that we use to clean vegetables, which is a proper colander as they’re known today.




Tomato Juice

5-7 pounds tomatoes (any will work, but Plum varieties [like Roma] have less pulp and more meat)

Wash and quarter all tomatoes into a large pot, seeds and all. Cook on medium-high heat until soft through, about 10-15 minutes. Ladle into chinois over a large bowl and strain out the juice by rolling the pestle around inside. Dump out skins and seeds from chinois after each use, refill and repeat.







Now that you have your tomato sauce prepared and standing by, we can begin the Chili Sauce.

1. Measure 5 ½ Cups of tomato sauce into a large stock pot.

2. Chop and measure the onions, celery and green peppers, and add them to the pot as well. TIP: Once again, Grandma brought out the food processor. You can chop all of the vegetables by hand, but that’s a lot of veggies to chop, and the food processor is very convenient. You could also use a blender, although you’d need to add some of the tomato juice as a liquid just to make things move in the blender, and Grandma warns that this will be foamier. TIP: Green peppers in a food processor will foam and create a lot of liquid; you can drain some of the liquid as we did to save on cooking time, or leave it in for flavor. TIP: Onions also create a lot of liquid in the food processor, if you chop them too finely. Use the “pulse” button to control how well they are chopped, or drain them if you must. TIP: We used both the celery stalks and the leaves; the leaves add a delicate flavor.

3. Add the spices: salt, vinegar, sugar, cinnamon and allspice. TIP: Again, you can play with the seasonings as you wish. TIP: You can use less sugar if you prefer; we make a rather sweet sauce.











4. Stir together and cook until it has cooked down about 25%, stirring occasionally to prevent scorching on the bottom. TIP: You can cook this on the stove, simmering for 2-3 hours, or you can put it into a 400º oven for 3-4 hours. You can see that in the oven it appears to have a crust on top, but it's soft; just stir it in.








5. Can the sauce. Shortly before the sauce has finished cooking, wash and heat the jars. You can see my Home Canning 101 post for more details on canning, but for this sauce, bring the water in the canning pot to a boil and process the jars for 30 minutes. Then remove and cool on a prepared heat-safe surface.






You could untie your hair at this point, but if you’re anxious to try your newest recipe, just brown 1 pound of ground beef, drain it of grease, and add a pint of Chili Sauce. Cook until it’s not too saucy, and you’ve got dinner ready. I like mine with a little yellow mustard and some shredded cheese. You could also untie your hair at this point, but they call them Sloppy Joes for a reason. Enjoy – tonight and for months to come.