Two in One Barbecue Sauce

Oh Ball, you have out done yourself on this one. This recipe, from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, makes two awesome barbecue sauces, a stampede style sauce, and a sweet and sour sauce. Make both, or just make one. Left  is the stampede style, and right is the sweet and sour.

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Ingredients:
Base:
16 cups seeded, peeled, pureed tomatoes
2 1/4 cups seeded, pureed green bell peppers
2 cups pureed onions
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tbsp mustard seeds, crushed
1 tbsp celery seeds
2 dried chili peppers, seeded and crushed

Stampede-Style ingredients:
3/4 cup mild flavored or fancy molasses
3/4 cup malt vinegar
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tbsp chili powder
2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Sweet and Sour Sauce:
1 tbsp finely chopped ginger root
3/4 cup honey
3/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 cups canned crushed pineapple, with juice

Here’s how to make it. Just as a note, since I was slightly confused until I reach the sidebar. This recipe is designed to make 6 pints, 3 of each type of sauce. So, if you just want to make one of the sauces, you’ll want to make the base sauce, and then double the ingredients from the one that you want to make. Otherwise what we’ll be doing is making the base, then splitting it into two pots and making 3 pints of each sauce.

Step 1. Puree the tomatoes. Of course, this is much easier with a food strainer, like this Victorio Strainer pictured below. If you don’t have one though, never fear. Peel and seed your tomatoes, and them blend them to puree. Or just buy a strainer.

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For this endeavor, Kiki had texted me that she had scored some tomatoes for dirt cheap, and asked if would I help her process them. I was thinking she’d probably have a small box we could just add to the sauce I was already making, but she showed up with a giant box that I now wish that I had weighed. We had a TON of puree when we finished, and through some ridiculous canning miracle it was actually almost exactly 32 cups, so we doubled the recipe.

While you prepare the rest of the ingredients you’ll want to get the tomato puree going on the stove so that it will reduce down to make you a nice thick sauce. Add some of it to a large stainless steel pot and bring it to a boil over high heat. Gradually add in more puree, maintaining the boil and stirring constantly, until it’s all in the pot. Continue to boil for at least an hour, or until reduced by about a half. If you are just doing a relaxing session, reduce the heat and let it simmer away for a while. If you want to reduce it faster, you could also divide it up into multiple pots for a while, and recombine it later.

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Meanwhile, puree the onions in the blender. The best way to get it going if you just have a normal old crappy blender is to cut some of them quite finely at the beginning, so that you can get some liquid onion. Once you’ve got a bit already pureed you can add pieces that are a bit bigger. Don’t mistake this concoction for a piña colada. It sure looks like one, but would certainly not go down so smooth.

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Next you want to puree the peppers, following the same procedure. We used almost all green but had a small red one too you can see we threw in there. Looks pretty nasty at this stage.

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After the tomatoes are fairly well reduced, add in the pureed peppers and onions. You’ll want everything in one pot now if you had separated it into multiple pots. Add the rest of the ingredients for the sauce base, the garlic, mustard seeds, celery seeds and crushed chili pepper. We found it kind of difficult to crush the mustard seeds, so used some but then also topped it off with ground mustard. I feel like you’d want less ground, not a 1:1 change out, but ground is definitely an option.

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Cook this down for at least 10 more minutes, until the peppers and onions are cooked. When you are happy with the base sauce, it’s time to divide and conquer. Take out half and put it into a different pot.

Below is the stampede style sauce first. Add all the ingredients for it to one of your pots.

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The other sauce is the sweet and sour sauce. Add all the ingredients for this sauce to your second pot. Continue to boil both mixtures gently, stirring frequently. You want to achieve the consistency of a thin commercial sauce, which will take about 45 minutes. However, I always tend to reduce things longer than Ball suggests, so use your judgement for a barbecue sauce consistency.

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While they continue to cook down, prepare the canner, jars and lids. you will likely get a bit more of the sweet and sour sauce, since it has more added ingredients. Probably close to 3 pints for the stampede and 4 for the sweet and sour, depending of course how long you reduce it for. Once it’s ready, fill your hot jars with hot sauce, leaving a half inch head space. Wipe rims, apply lids, and tighten bands finger tip tight. Place the jars in a boiling water bath canner covered by at least 1-2 inches of water. Process for 20 minutes, starting the time when a full rolling boil is reached.

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After 20 minutes, turn off heat, remove canner lid, wait 5 minutes and remove jars to a hot pad or towel. Cool 12-24 hours, remove bands, check seals, wipe clean, label and store.

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Two beautiful and delicious sauces. Stampede on the left in the Ball jar. A slightly spicy, peppery sauce, and sweet and sour on the right in the Kerr. I must admit I was much more excited for the stampede style, but that sweet and sour is also to die for. I highly recommend making both. If you are also looking for an awesome ketchup recipe, check out my country western ketchup post from last summer. Happy canning!

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*this post contains affiliate links, please see the “About the Blogger” page for more information

Can it forward day. A giveaway!

Happy international can it forward day! I hope that you all canned something today and/or ate something that you had canned to celebrate. To me, can it forward day is basically everyday, as I love to get others on to the canning train. I didn’t actually can today, because I just got home from a conference late last night, but zucchini relish and tomato sauce are on the roster for tomorrow. But anyways that brings me to the reason for this post. A can it forward day giveaway!! Pictured below are my giveaway items. I’ve decide to include 4 canned goodies, the zesty zucchini relish and tomato sauce are the two pint size jars, and you will get the fresh stuff I make tomorrow. The half pints are strawberry jam and Victorian barbecue sauce. Yum yum yum. The other exciting thing is that I will be giving away a copy of So Easy to Preserve, which is written by the University of Georgia extension service. This book is an amazing resource with many scientifically tested and trusted recipes. The one caveat, however, is that they are coming out with a new edition at the end of the month so I don’t yet have this book in my possession. What that means is I will likely ship (or give to in person depending who wins) the winner the other prizes first, followed by the book when it comes out. But what this does mean is you’ll be getting the most up to date awesome recipes!

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OK here is how to enter. There are going to actually be multiple ways that you can enter this contest. First you will receive one entry for commenting on this page and telling us who first introduced you to canning. Was it a parent or grandparent, a friend, or something you just started doing on your own? I love to hear how people got started, so that will earn you an entry. You can also earn an entry by liking the babbling botanist Facebook page and inviting others to do so. In the spirit of canning it forward I’d like to be able to reach more people and Facebook is a great way to do so. This is going to get complicated for me to tally up, but this is my plan. Anyone you invite gets an entry, but it also earns you an entry if they post the name of the person that invited them like my page on my Facebook wall. I hope this doesn’t get too confusing for everyone involved, but I’m going to give it a shot! The contest will close on the one year anniversary of me starting this blog, August 22 2014 at 9pm Pacific time.

Happy canning! And sorry, but I can ship to Canada and USA only.

Thanks y’all, this giveaway is now CLOSED.

Victorian Barbecue Sauce

I’ve had a lot of rhubarb coming in lately, so I decided to go for something a little different this time, and whipped up some Victorian barbecue sauce from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. This is great on chicken, and I bet it would be nice on pork as well. It tastes surprisingly good and is quite easy to make. I am trying to get away from store bought braises and sauces for meat, and this is a delicious replacement; a nice combo of sweet and tart.

Ingredients:
8 cups chopped rhubarb
3.5 cups lightly packed brown sugar
1.5 cups chopped raisins
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground cinamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp salt

Here’s how we made it:

Chop up the rhubarb, onions, and raisins.

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Combine all the ingredients in a stainless steal pot.

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This turns to brown muck pretty fast! Bring to a boil over high heat. Stir frequently and reduce to a simmer. We cooked the sauce for about a half hour. You want it to be the consistency of a barbecue sauce. Not too thick though… spreadable.

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I ended up pureeing it because I forgot to chop the raisins. This dummie just through them in. It should kind of be a pureed consistency anyways since it’s a sauce, so just don’t forget to chop the raisins 😉 Meanwhile, prepare the canner, jars and lids. This makes about 4 pints.

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Fill the hot jars, leaving a half inch head space. I hate to say it, but it kind of looks like we were canning up diarrhea. Yep, I said it. Gross. But it tastes really good. Anyways, that was awkward. Wipe the rims, apply the lids, and tighten the bands finger tip tight. Place jars in canner, covered by at least 1-2 inches of water, bring to a full rolling boil and process for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes remove canner lid, wait 5 minutes, and remove the jars to a hot pad or towel. Listen to them ping! Cool 12-24 hours, wipe jars, label and store.

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Try this sauce on barbecued chicken. It’s really delicious.

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*this post contains affiliate links, please see the “About the Blogger” page for more information