How to Can Your Own Tomato Based Spaghetti Sauce

Canning your own food assures you of the quality, and gives you control over the ingredients in commonly used foods. When you find that a member of the family needs to reduce their salt intake, for instance, the need to preserve your own food becomes a priority. But sometimes the motivation is just because you have a very special recipe and you want to can a supply for use in the winter while summer supplies are still abundant and relatively cheap. Homemade tomato based spaghetti sauce can be preserved by canning in quarts for a large family or in pint jars for two.

The steps to canning the sauce start with assembling all the canning supplies. The reason to assemble the supplies before you make the sauce is that you want to put the freshly made sauce, boiling hot, right into the jars and seal it. The sauce decreases in nutritional quality if cooled and reheated before canning.

Your tomato based sauce will be high acid (because of the tomatoes) so it can be safely processed in a boiling water bath. Boiling water bath canners are sold commercially or can be any kettle in your kitchen that meets these 3 criteria:
1. The jars need to be completely covered with two inches of water above the tops of the jars when the water is at a full boil
2. The kettle needs to have a tight fitting lid
3. The jars must be held off the bottom of the kettle by a screen so the heat can penetrate evenly (a round cake cooling screen in the bottom of the kettle will work).