Spicy Bloody Mary Mix

I went to the Mennonite market today and their canning and roma tomatoes were on sale–$15/box, and I might have gotten a little carried away, because I bought 3 boxes. That is a LOT of tomatoes. My plan is to make Bloody Mary mix, Roasted Garlic Marinara sauce, and to can a case of tomatoes. I bought a box that was a couple days old for $10 and I decided that the quickest thing to make with those was to get the tomatoes cleaned, quartered and cooking for the Bloody Mary Mix.

To make this mix, I also cook green/red bell peppers, onions, jalapenos, and poblano peppers in with the tomatoes.

I got one pot full of quartered tomatoes and put it on the stove. Romas are on the dry side, so I added a cup of water to keep them from sticking.

I filled a second pot and added a cup of water to it. Then I started prepping the other vegetables. I’m not too fussy about cutting stuff up for this because it’s all going to go through the food mill.

Once the tomatoes were cooked in the first pot, I strained the tomatoes out of the liquid and put in the vegetables.

When the second pot of tomatoes was cooked, I strained out the tomatoes and put in the rest of the tomatoes. Once everything was cooked, I set up the food mill.

I sent the tomatoes through first. And I processed the peppers and onions second. You can see the difference in the color of the two containers of juice.

I let the containers sit overnight in the fridge to let the pulp settle as you can see here.

I used a ladle to remove the excess water and I brought the juice up to 190 degrees Fahrenheit–do NOT boil. I also prepped my jars, and lids and got my hot water canner up to temperature.

To each quart jar, I added 2 tbsp of lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt and filled it leaving 1/4″ headspace. I placed them in the canner and processed them for 45 minutes.

I removed from canner and let them sit on the counter until they were completely. I removed the rings, wiped the lids, labeled them and put them away.

I thought that I might have a lot of waste with the box of older tomatoes, but this was it.