You can use them but they can still have some effect on some recipes. When a recipe is borderline to begin with then many recommend first rehydrating the dried onions and peppers in vinegar before adding them.

Since any spaghetti sauce recipe that could be BWB canned rather than pressure canned would bound to be borderline, that is what I would suggest doing.

Personally I can't think of any approved spaghetti sauce recipe that allows for BWB canning since it is normally chunky and quite dense as well as contains lots of low acid vegetables. There are a couple of seasoned tomato sauce recipes that do since they use the spice blend recipes in the BBB p.35.

Dave

It was the last two years we went through the different recipes so at the moment I'm drawing a blank on the names but basically it was different tomato based sauces that could be used as spaghetti sauce. It was between the Ball book and Is the name Topp Book of small batch (or something like that, I'm sure you know the name it's mentioned over and over here).

I know home created recipes aren't acceptable but that adding dried spices is acceptable. So I was wondering if adding dried onions and peppers would also fall under the dried spices rule. If so I could take plain tomatoes and add spices and dried onions and peppers and taste test till I got something we liked and than can them like tomatoes.

So if I rehydrated the onions and peppers in vinegar would it be safe to create my own recipe if my only other additions are dried spices and salt? And could I use any type of vinegar (such as balsamic or apple cider) or only white?

Theoretically you can use any kind of vinegar IF it is 5% acidity but if just for rehydration purposes I wouldn't worry about it. Any of them will add acid to the mix.

" If so I could take plain tomatoes and add spices and dried onions and peppers and taste test till I got something we liked and than can them like tomatoes."

What processing time would you use? The closest recipe I can find calls for 35 min for pints and 40 min for quarts (BBB Seasoned Tomato Sauce).

Dave

That was why I was trying to figure out if the dried veggies "counted" as anything. If they were freebies that could be added or changed at whim but didn't affect the times similar to dried herbs, my thoughts were then basically I was canning my plain tomatoes with some freebies and so I would process them at 45 minutes like I do with my quarts of crushed tomatoes. The sauce would be quite liquidity but since we cook with whole wheat noodles, they could easily soak up the extra. So does this sound within the bounds of safe or not?

That should be plenty of time since it is longer than any of the approved sauce recipes.

Dave