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.

Hamburger: Help With Scratch Cooking

My boyfriend doesn’t like casseroles, but sometimes I worry that my dad could live on boxed hamburger noodle meals during the colder months when he isn't as inclined to grill. While a lot of these boxed helpers are making the jump to whole grain pastas, they still have a long way to go in lowering their sodium content. For dinner a few nights ago, I made my own version, with fresh tomatoes from my dad’s pet plants. (He doesn’t have a garden, but he has tomatoes, which I think is a growing trend; my boyfriend’s parents only have a few tomato and pepper plants.) Plus, I love macaroni and cheese from scratch, so this meal was a great compromise.

This meal is an exercise in multi-tasking, and you’ll have three things on the stove, but they will all be in sight and shouldn’t be too hard to watch. So tie your hair back and wash your hands, because here we go.

TIP: Most ingredients are available in many versions, and you can always choose the healthier options: unsalted light butter, whole-wheat flour, skim milk, lean beef, whole-wheat pasta, 2% milk cheese, etc. TIP: There’s always a ratio on ground beef packaging. That’s the meat-to-fat ratio. You’ll notice ground beef that is actually labeled as “Ground Beef” is often available in a 70-30 ratio, because “beef” could mean anything when it comes to the cut and may include fattier pieces of meat. “Ground Chuck” is a ground chuck roast, which is a less fatty cut of beef and a more specific quality. You can find ground beef (that's ground beef in general, not "Ground Beef") in as good as a 95-5 ratio, and it will be more expensive because you are getting more meat and less fat. You can potentially buy the cheaper stuff since you’re going to drain the fat off before mixing your ground beef into your recipe, but since it’s all 1 pound when you purchased it, you’ll drain off more fat and be left with less meat in the long run. TIP: Roma tomatoes are used for a lot of sauces because of their construction – they contain a lot more meat and a lot less pulp and seeds. My Grandmother likes them for tomato sauces like spaghetti sauce and sloppy joe sauce. I like them because they are easy to prepare. See the photo above for Roma tomatoes; there are a few large slicing tomatoes hiding in the back. TIP: For my dad, I used 1½ cups of shredded cheese and a 1”-thick slice of Velveeta, cubed. It adds to the creaminess of the sauce.

Beefy Mexican Macaroni and Cheese

½ onion
1 clove of garlic
4 Tablespoons fresh cilantro, divided
2-3 Roma tomatoes, or 1 large slicing tomato
1 pound ground beef
2-3 teaspoons chili powder
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
3 Tablespoons flour
1 Cup milk
1 ½ - 2 Cups shredded cheese
1 box pasta

1. Prepare your ingredients and put water on to boil. TIP: If you have an extra large pot in which you can cook the pasta, that will be convenient when you need to mix all of the final ingredients.

Chop ½ onion, mince the clove of garlic, and chop the cilantro. 2 Tablespoons of the cilantro and the rest of the ingredients you just chopped can go straight into a skillet, where you’ll soon brown ground beef. Save the other 2 Tablespoons of cilantro in a bowl, and while your cutting board is out, dice the tomatoes and add them to the saved cilantro.





TIP: I find Roma tomatoes to be the easiest to chop. Slice off a little from each end so that you can stand it up. Then slice down through the standing tomato to cut it into sixths. Over a bowl or the sink (carefully though, so you don’t drop it!), slide your thumb into the pocket of pulp and seeds, and they’ll easily come out; throw that away. Lay the piece of tomato on its side, and slice off the center piece to make one strip. Turn the piece onto its skin side and slice that into strips. Stack the strips together and slice across them to finish chopping.

2. Get the beef in the skillet and the pasta in the water. Brown the beef over medium heat with the onion, garlic, cilantro and chili powder. TIP: You can add more chili powder now or later if you want it to be more flavorful; you could also use taco seasoning which will incorporate many other flavors, but again, those premixed packets come heavy with salt, so buy the lower-sodium variety.

Pay attention to your water and add the pasta as soon as it boils; set a timer so you do not have to remember to look at the clock for cooking time.

When the beef is ready, drain the grease and then add the tomatoes and extra cilantro. I like both the milder cooked cilantro flavor and the fresh cilantro flavor, but to keep the cilantro and tomatoes fresh, don’t cook for more than a minute; just stir them into the meat. Remove it from the heat; just slide it onto a back burner, which is both heat-safe and out of your way.

3. Start the sauce. Over medium-low heat, melt the 2 Tablespoons of butter and then add the flour, whisking constantly. This will need to cook a little until it just starts getting a color; that will cook out the “floury” taste, and only takes a minute or two. As soon as it has just started to brown, add the 1 Cup of milk and whisk constantly to a boil. This will take a few more minutes, but doesn’t need to be whisked vigorously; just keep the bottom from scorching. As soon as it boils, add the cheese and stir with a spoon just until the cheese has melted. Remove from heat to keep it from cooking.



When the timer for the pasta goes off, turn off the heat, but don’t abandon your cheese sauce if you're still in the middle of it or you will have a disaster. If your pasta has to sit for an extra minute in water, it might get a tad softer; if any stage of your cheese sauce sits alone for an extra minute, you will have a scorched, smelly mess. Whenever you have a minute to spare, drain the pasta.







4. Combine the meat, pasta and sauce. If your pasta is already in a large pot, just add to it the sauce and meat. Otherwise, use a large heat-safe mixing bowl. Now that it’s practically ready to serve, taste your food and see if it needs any last minute tweaks. I added just a little more chili powder, but I didn’t add any salt; I know a lot of cooks say your food should be seasoned and ready to serve, but when some people add salt before even tasting their food, I say hold off.

I served this with fresh corn-on-the-cob, which I conveniently cooked in the microwave after I had completed the casserole. Just wrap the shucked corn in waxed paper and twist the ends so that it looks like a giant piece of taffy, and microwave on a plate for 5-10 minutes, depending on how many ears are on the plate.


















Now you can let your hair down.