You need to buy a copy of the Ball Blue Book for starters. Sold anywhere that sells canning supplies - even WalMart - for about $6. There are several other approved books but that one is the basic starter book.

Online: NCHFP, here (there are tons of recipes here), freshpreserving.com and homecanning.com (the Bernardin site). Search 'Annie's salsa', 'Leesa recipes', and 'rotel' for those specific recipes.

Dave

Your best bet is here : All safe recipes. Click on the left side where it says how do I " Can" .
The salsa recipes are for boiling water bath, but you can also pressure can if you want. I would just suggest using the same processing times since we have no way to convert them.
You can only use the fresh herbs if they are listed in the specific recipes. Otherwise you would use dried. You can easily dry your own. Fresh herbs are considered low acid vegetables. That is why you can't just add them to things not called for.

Here is a link that might be useful: Univ. of Georgia

As far as the herbs go, you can freeze and dry them to preserve. I make all kinds of herb pastes and freeze them in ice cube trays and then take them out in little 1 TBLSP chunks and put in plastic freezer containers, (mint, cilantro, parsley, basil, sage).

I also recommend getting the Ball Blue Book of Canning, either the large one or a cheapie small one. I find those books have the largest selection of tried and true recipes and are the easiest to follow. WELL worth the investment. That's the gold standard that we start with here for advice.

Went to NCHFP site. Found a recipe for spaghetti sauce. Can any one explain why there is no acid added to the recipe???? I thought you needed to add acid to the tomatoes and other low acid vegetables to make them safe? Seriously considering canning just whole tomatoes and creating recipes with those as I go...then I know for sure I won't be contaminating my family and dumping out another 40 jars because I am told the recipe is not right and/or safe. UGH!

My guess would be because it's pressure canned instead of BWB'd.

The only spaghetti sauce recipe that I've seen BWB'd is Mrs. Wages and it has added citric acid in it's contents.

Val

All the recipes at NCHFP are safe, repeatedly tested (this one was just reviewed last year), and approved. The spaghetti sauce is not only pressure canned but the added sugar binds up much of the water in the recipe so the effect on the pH is reduced. Note it also comes with very specific instructions about not changing any of the proportions.

You can always choose to add acid to the recipe and some do but it is not required in this specific recipe. You'll see that it also allows some oil which is normally prohibited. It is one of the few exceptions to the rules.

Dave

I have seen the statement about the sugar in the NCHFP spaghetti sauce recipe binding water to add to the safety of the sauce.

This is an email I had with Elizabeth Andress last year. Note her answer to question 4: the sugar can be eliminated completely with no change in processing, so I am not sure how much the sugar adds to the "safety" factor:

Thank you for visiting the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
> question -> Spaghetti Sauce without Meat:
> 1. Can I eliminate the celery/peppers completely?
> 2. Can I use fresh herbs or only dried?
> 3. Can I add basil (fresh or dried)?
> 4. Can I eliminate the sugar?

For our particular procedures: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/spaghetti_sauce.html

1. You can leave out the celery and peppers completely, leaving everything else the same. (The mushrooms are already optional, also.)
2. If you use fresh herbs, make sure they are very clean. I can only recommend using the equivalent volume measures, though, and that may not give you the flavor you desire. Eg., instead of 2 TBSP dried oregano, use 2 TBSP minced fresh oregano. I do not have enough information to know the upper limit on how much fresh to add, so that's all I can suggest without testing. (which we cannot do).
3. You can use basil as a substitute for one of the other herbs (eg, you may not want the parsley with basil). Or, if you are leaving out the celery and peppers completely, you could add 2 to 4 TBSP of basil.
4. Yes, you can eliminate the sugar in this recipe.
   The chopped celery and/or peppers and the sugar add a little moisture/liquid in many recipes. In this particular sauce, however, it is cooked down to thickened consistency anyway, so the amount of liquid that would be added by these ingredients would not be important as it might be in other types of food products/mixtures.
   Best wishes,
   Elizabeth Andress
   --------------------------------------
   Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D.
   Project Director, National Center for HFP
   Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist
   Department of Foods and Nutrition
   The University of Georgia
   208 Hoke Smith Annex
   Athens, GA 30602-4356
   Phone: (706) 542-3773
   FAX: (706) 542-1979
   -----------------------------------------------

I wash my herbs and freeze them in ziplock bags, when they are frozen they crumble easily and usually don't have to be chopped. Just made a batch of chunky basil pasta sauce, but I froze it because it cooked down to about 3 quarts, not enough to drag the canner out again.