Canning Tomatoes: Roasted Salsa

Step 7 Tools

You will need to purchase or acquire canning specific jars and lids. Bell Jars are the most common. The lids come with a seal top and a ring that twists onto top of the jar to hold on lid with the seal. You can find these products at some grocery stores or hardware stores. Not everyone carries them anymore, but perhaps just try calling stores ahead before going to purchase to make sure. Purchasing jars are a solid investment because you can just keep reusing them again and again, only replacing the lid seals.

Once you have the Jars though, its not absolutely mandatory to have other canning specific tools. Items which help are a canning pot with a rack made to hold canning jars as well as tongs shaped for grabbing jars.

I don't have a canning specific pot or rack. I just use a large 5 gallon aluminum stock pot, we got a long time ago for brewing beer. I think we bought it at a local grocery store for about $15. If you don't have one, you can use a large soup pot. As you need the boiling water to cover your jars 2 inches or at the very least an inch, you may not be able to can pint or quart jars in this, but you will be able to use the smaller cup jars, which will work for salsa.

A canning rack is used to keep the jars away from touching the bottom and sides of the hot metal pot. Because I don't have a rack, I just put a dish towel at the bottom of the pot and sit the jars on top of the towel to keep the jars from having contact with the hot metal. It works fine, although slightly annoying. I have canned without the towel before when I was so annoyed with the towel, and I didn't have any jars break, but I wouldn't suggest this for any jars which require more processing time.

I recently got canning tongs, but before that, I used regular kitchen tongs. You can improvise with what you have.