Lucky for me this months Can Jam theme ingredient was ready very early here in Toronto. Our growing season has been so warm that every crop has been popping up at our markets at least 2 weeks earlier than normal. We have loads of plans for tomatoes in the coming weeks. We have a tomato conserva recipe that I really want to try from Paul Bertoli's Cooking by Hand. A ketchup is also something that would be great to try out (replace and skip the Heinz for good!). There is the now annual jars and jars of sauce (second year in a row makes it annual now!)
So far I've made some mustard and relish and for the last few of our summer cookouts we needed some good old Barbecue sauce. I wanted to start with very basic recipe for our first canned barbecue sauce. The only thing I couldn't resist was adding some more heat. The recipe called for some chili flakes but that wasn't nearly enough so I added some chipotles in adobo. I love the sweet and smokey heat they add to anything and figured it was the perfect addition to give this basic sauce a bit more of a boost.
Chipotle Barbecue Sauce
(adapted from the Bernardin Complete Book of Home Preserving)
Ingredients:
20 cups of chopped tomatoes
2 cups of chopped onions
1/4 cup chipotle chiles in adobo
3 cloves of finely chopped garlic
1 tbsp of hot pepper flakes
1 tbsp of celery seeds
1 1/2 cups of lightly packed brown sugar
1 cup of white vinegar
1/3 cup of lemon juice
2 tbsp of salt
1 tbsp of ground mace
1 tbsp of dry mustard
1 tsp of ground ginger
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
This recipe yielded 4 - 500ml Jars
1 - In a stainless steel pot, combine tomatoes, onions, chipotles, garlic, hot pepper flakes and celery seeds. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, cover and boil gently until everything softens, about 30 minutes.
2 - Pass the the mixture through a food mill. Keep passing the seeds and skins through the mill until they are dry and all the pulp has been extracted.
3 - Return the mixture to the pot and boil, stirring occasionally, until cooked down by one quarter. Add brown sugar, vinegar, lemon juice, salt, mace, mustard, ginger and cinnamon. Return to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and boil gently, stirring frequently, until mixture is thickened, about 30-40 mins.
4 - Prepare jars and lids, ladle sauce into hot jars leaving 1/2 inch of head space and remove any air bubbles. Hot water process jars for 20 minutes.
