Slow Cooker Chili Sauce for Canning

In our ongoing effort to find tasty things for us to make ourselves and can for later, Willie and I set about making chili sauce for topping our hot dogs. Everyone likes a chili dog, right? We began our search for a good no-bean chili recipe and came across this recipe at Taste of Home. We modified it to fit our own use by taking the hot dogs out and increasing the sauce to meat ratio somewhat, so that it would be better for canning. Here is the recipe we devised:

3 lbs ground beef, cooked and drained

5 15oz cans tomato sauce

⅔ c worcestershire

5 Tbsp dried minced onion

2 ½ tsp garlic powder

2 ½ tsp mustard powder

2 ½ tsp chili powder

2 ½ tsp ground black pepper

¼ tsp cayenne pepper, heaping

Your first step should be to brown and drain your ground beef.




















This gives a better flavor, texture, and appearance to the meat than it would have if you just lumped it all in the crock pot raw.

Next, add in the tomato sauce.

Finally, measure out your flavorings and seasonings This recipe is pretty easy in that all of the seasonings are dry. No chopping onions for you!







Stir it all up and put the lid on. Allow it to cook for about 4-5 hours on low. Just long enough to warm it up and allow the flavors to mingle a bit.








Once it is good and hot, turn your crock pot to "keep warm" and start preparing your jars and equipment for canning.










If you need help with canning equipment, please see my blog post on the subject. Otherwise, continue on to my Basics of Canning page for further instructions on preparing home-canned food. Please note that we processed our chili sauce as though it were spaghetti sauce with meat. Please check your pressure canner's instruction manual for directions on how long to process your sauce, and at what pressure.

Don't forget! You can always pull a jar of chili out of the pantry for Chili Cheese Sandwiches as well!

Slow Cooker Freezer Meals

A while back one of my co-workers posted on Facebook that she was so proud, because she had made and frozen enough crockpot meals to last the whole month. Needless to say I was a bit jealous, and was certainly eager to try out the idea for myself! So, I found a weekend and made a couple of test meals.The recipes I used came from hello glow. I made the Beef and Vegetable Stew, and the Sausage Lentil Soup. There are stacks of free recipes online, as well as cookbooks to be purchased.

The first thing you should do is to write the name and instructions for the meal on the outside of a gallon-sized zip top bag. That way, if you are making more than one meal at a time you won't be confused as to what goes where.















Open your zip top bag an insert it into a container of some sort. A canister or a pitcher would work best, just so that the bag will stand up while you fill it. It also helps if you fold the top over the edge of the container, so that the bag doesn't fall down into it.

Start prepping your veggies. If you have a mandolin slicer or a chopper it will make the process go by much faster.

You may also need to trim, slice, or cube the meats you are using. For the sausage soup I sliced my keilbasa into bite-sized pieces.
















There will also be recipes that will call for meats or other ingredients to be cooked before they go in the freezer bag. I cooked my onion and browned up the sausage a bit, then let it all cool to room temperature before putting it in the bag.















While my onions and meat were cooling I began assembling the rest of the ingredients. All the chopped veggies went in, as well as a can of tomatoes. I sorted out my lentils (and found a rock!) and added those too.

Once all the ingredients are in the bag, squeeze out as much air as possible and seal. You can lay the bag flat to freeze, then it is easier to stack them once they are frozen. Most recipes will call for you to remove the meal from the freezer the night before, and place it in the refrigerator to thaw. When you are ready to cook it up, just empty the contents into the slow cooker and add in the liquid. The best part about a crockpot meal is that you can put it on to cook while you do other things. So, go to work, run errands, clean the house, visit your granny, whatever is on your agenda for the day, and your meal will cook without you!

Here are some links to more slow cooker freezer meal recipes:

Side Tracked Sarah

Thirty Handmade Days

The Krazy Coupon Lady

Crock-Pot Ladies

New Leaf Wellness

Have fun! Happy crock-potting!

Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce

I really love this recipe for spaghetti sauce because it is easy, tasty, and cans well. Because it is a crockpot recipe it will cook overnight or while I'm at work, and then I am able to can it when I have the time. The original recipe, from which I adapted this one, can be found here. I would encourage you to please visit the site and leave a good review, as I like to give credit to those who did the "leg work" and came up with a good recipe to begin with. I adapted the recipe to omit the meat, doubled the recipe and made it a bit more saucy, so that it would be easier to can and to open up the options for what I could eat it with.

Here's the recipe I used:

2 medium onions, chopped
4 cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes
2 cans (14.5 oz) tomato sauce
2 cans (8 oz) tomato paste
2 bay leaves
2 Tbsp brown sugar
8-10 cloves minced garlic
4 tsp dried basil
4 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp salt
2 tsp thyme
Lots of ground black pepper (I don't measure, I just grind!)
A few dashes of hot sauce, if I'm feeling like a spicy sauce

Please note that I have a pretty big crock pot. If your crock pot is smaller, you can make a half batch pretty easily. Start off by dumping in all of your tomato products.











Add in all your seasonings, garlic and brown sugar. The only thing that should be left out until the very end is the bay leaves. Don't put those fellows in just yet!











Mix it all together really well before you put the onions in. That way it is easier to blend your tomato paste in. If you don't blend the tomato paste in, it can stick to the side or bottom of the crock pot and burn.










Chop up your onions. You don't need to worry about chopping it up super fine, or even uniformly. We're going to use a stick blender on this beautiful mess at the end!











Stir in your onions, add your bay leaves, put a lid on it, and turn it to low. You'll want this to cook for about 8 hours. Did you notice that I left the bay leaves sticking out just a tiny bit?











Once your 8 hours are up, snag those bay leaves out and find your stick blender. It's a lot easier to find the bay leaves if you leave just the tip sticking out of the sauce. Whatever you do, don't forget to pull out the bay leaves. Believe me, it's not great if you forget.









Using your stick blender, grind your sauce up until it's nice and smooth. I like a saucy sauce, but if you like yours a bit more chunky, you can just blend a little, or you can skip it altogether. If you are planning on canning this sauce, turn your slow cooker to warm while you get your jars and rings together. This is the recipe I used in my instructional post Food Preservation - The Basics of Canning.