Chili Sauce

Chili sauce is a Canadian food; it's a tangy, sweet sauce that is used in place of ketchup. Honestly, it's basically ketchup before ketchup gets pureed. It evolved as a way to use up the tomatoes at the end of the harvest, so they wouldn't go bad. It also happens to be a major family tradition to get together in August and make a big batch of chili sauce to last the whole year. Unfortunately, we haven't done it the last few years, and I've had to make my own batches.

Since it's hot in Texas year-round, we figured we could do our chili sauce weekend pretty much any time during the summer. We did some searching and tried a couple farmer's markets. We've had issues with the farmer's markets in San Antonio in the past, and this was no exception.

We tried the Pearl Brewery district Farmer's Market. It was more of a hang-out spot than a place to get serious produce. Which is fine, but I needed a bushel of tomatoes, soooo... We moved on.

Pearl Brewery Farmer's Market. 

We ended up getting the produce we needed at Sun Harvest, which is like a bulk food store/produce market. I didn't get photos. We got the canning gear and the rest of the ingredients at HEB. For some reason, I remembered to get a photo:

Everything else.

We've made chili sauce before, but I borrowed my mom's canning gear. So this time I had to buy my own kit. Now that I have it, my mom informs me that I need to learn to make jelly and jam. It would last forever, as I detest it, and Brandon only uses it once in a blue moon. 

Anywho, Chili sauce is one of those "throw everything in a pot and boil the ever-loving hell out of it!" recipes. So, photo dump!

So many onions. So many tomatoes.

Oh, did I mention that Rory helped?

Brandon got artsy with the photos.

Tomato dis-assembly line.

Work-in-progress.

Jars awaiting their contents.

Canning setup.

Getting redder.

Canning time.

Yay!

And now we have chili sauce to last us all year. So, we discovered that I need to alter my recipe a bit. The card my mom gave me calls for 30 tomatoes and 10 onions. But I think our tomatoes are small and our onions are big. This is the second year that I've made chili sauce myself, and the second time that it has been overly oniony. So I need to watch out for that next time. 

But other than that, it was a major success! Chili sauce is a big comfort food for me. I kept a jar in the fridge in my dorm in college. I'd put it on my eggs in the morning - yes, I'd bring it down to the cafeteria with me at breakfast. It helped with homesickness. 

And anyway, now we can stop buying ketchup. ^_^