Home Canned Spaghetti Sauce with Meat

As mentioned yesterday, home canned spaghetti sauce with meat is a must have tomato based product in our pantry.  It puts any store bought pasta sauce to shame at a fraction of the cost.  I use my own developed after years and years of tweaking to where I finally have the perfect blend our family so much enjoys.  The original recipe, if you can even call it that, was taught to me by my mother-in-law as a newlywed.  It was a toss this in, cook, taste and adjust with nothing written down very much the same way I learned to cook from my Mom.  It is now been developed into an actual recipe for home canning purposes but I also continue to tweak for fresh use and freezing.

I ended up with 14 - 500 ml jars of ready to use home canned spaghetti sauce with meat.  It also has mushroom slices in it making for a rich, full bodied, flavourful sauce.  This sauce is used on pasta, in homemade lasagna and other casseroles.  I make oodles of this sauce so fourteen jars is nowhere enough for what we will need for the upcoming year but again, I don't mind making a large batch for fresh use and freezing during the cooler months.  It helps heat the house and smells heavenly when cooking.  Having a bit of homemade convenience in the pantry is nice for the days I don't have the time to make fresh!

Home canned spaghetti sauce with meat is low acid so has to be processed in a pressure canner.  While my spaghetti sauce with meat recipe will not be posted here, if you would like to home can your own check out the spaghetti sauce with meat recipe from the NCHFP is a good place to start.  The sauce on that site can be tweaked providing you do not alter the ratios.  I will note, NCHFP does not acidify their spaghetti sauce with met but I do.  Tomatoes are borderline pH 4.6 so the recommendation is always to acidify them and that applies to those tomato products that will be pressure canned as well.  I use citric acid to acidify my tomato products that do not specifically use vingar, lemon or lime juice.