Canning Spaghetti with Meat Sauce

One of the first foods I ever canned was spaghetti sauce.  Jon love Italian food, every kind of Italian food!  The main ingredient to any good Italian dish is the sauce.  So of course, I try to keep plenty of homemade sauce on hand! 

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce
3lbs hamburger meat
2lbs pork sausage
5 cloves of garlic minced
1 onion diced
1 green pepper diced
6 Tablespoons Italian Seasoning
2 teaspoons black pepper 

To be added to jars later
1 teaspoon Morton Canning Salt (per quart jar) 
2 6oz cans of tomato paste
3 33oz boxes of tomato sauce

In a skillet (or two) brown hamburger and sausage, add the additional ingredients to the skillet. Don't worry about cooking it down all the way, the mixture will continue cooking during the canning process.  Drain fat from the meat.  

Spoon mixture into sterilized Ball Wide Mouth Quart Jars, just under half full.  This will be about one pound of cooked meat. Next add one tablespoon of tomato paste to each jar and a teaspoon of canning salt.  You can use table salt.  The biggest reason to use canning salt is because it doesn't turn cloudy in the canning process, but because this is a tomato based (not a clear) sauce, table salt would work fine. 

The last step is to finish filling the quart jars with tomato sauce.  The boxed sauce is easier to pour and doesn't have that metal tin can taste.  Be sure to use a plastic spoon to stir in the sauce and remove air bubbles.  The meat will have a lot of holes for air pockets to form, so stir thoroughly.  Fill the jars leaving 1" head space. 

Wipe the rims of the jar with vinegar and seal with sterilized caps and rims.  Process the quarts for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 10 pounds pressure in Pressure Canner.

I made two batches of this recipe and it yielded 10 quarts of sauce. These will be great over angel hair pasta, or ravioli, or lasagna, or tortellini . . .

He gives food to every creature. His love endures forever. Psalm 136:25