I like the ratio of ingredients in this recipe below for Mexican Tomato Sauce, but I don't want any peppers, especially not chiles. Can I make this recipe and just leave out ALL the peppers? Or can I make the NCHFP recipe for tomato vegetable juice blend using only the amount of onions and then thicken into a sauce?

Or why can't I make the recipe for Tomatoes with Okra or Zucchini using onions instead of okra or zucchini? According to pH scales I've seen here posted by Dave, onions are slightly more acidic than either okra or zucchini.

P.S.: I pressure-can everything these days as per NCHFP's recommendations. BWB is just too hot, steamy, and too much trouble for me.

Thanks!

If you want it thick enough to put on pasta (not stand-a-spoon-in-the-jar thick) then use the Spaghetti Sauce recipe and omit the peppers/celery. The mushrooms are optional anyway. And you can always omit or cut down on the garlic, the parsley, the sugar, the salt, the oil and change the oregano to your taste.

I suppose I could use this one from Ball and just omit the basil and oil. It's not 18:3 like the Mexican sauce, but at 20:1, it's closer than the spaghetti.

I'm trying to make a canned base for pizza sauce without having to add fresh onions when I make the pizza sauce. (And yes, I canned the Ball Pizza Sauce recipe last year but it was bland, thin, and just tasted like plain tomato sauce so why bother.) I'm convinced it's the onions that give my regular pizza sauce its flavor.

"Full pint volumes of low acid vegetables (onions or peppers) were combined with ¼ cup of lemon juice (60 ml) to determine if consumer error could lead to unsafe acid levels in the guideline salsa recipe. Several varieties of onions were packed tight into a pint jar and weighed. From 263 - 295 g fit into jars from nine replicates. The maximum pint volume of green peppers weighed from 296 - 304 g for three replicates. After adding lemon juice, cooking, and boiling water processing, the full pint volumes of acidified onions had a pH range from 3.59 - 3.82 and full pint volumes of acidified green peppers had a pH range of 3.66 - 3.80 (data not shown). "

I see no reason why the same volume of onion substituted for green bell peppers in a tomato-based sauce and pressure canned would be any different. Especially since NCHFP says you can sub them in BWBing (Choice Salsa) and that you can sub sweet peppers for chiles and vice versa, when the acidification study showed that jalapenos were a bit harder to acidify than either onions or sweet peppers:

"Lemon juice (15 ml) safely acidified 100 g of each vegetable to below pH 4.0. Brine and solids pH measurements were nearly identical indicating acid equilibration within the 24 h period. When 30 ml of lemon juice was added to 100 g of vegetable the pH was safely reduced for: sweet green peppers (pH <3.43), Roma tomatoes (pH <3.38), white onions (pH <3.44) and hot (jalapeño) peppers (pH <3.73). "

If you used the Spaghetti Sauce recipe and subbed onions for the peppers you would have 2C for 30 lbs of tomatoes. That's about twice as "tomatoey" as the juice blend, which says use no more than 3C of low acid (onions, peppers, or a mix) veggies to 22 lbs of tomatoes (or 4.09C low-acid veggies to 30 lbs of tomatoes). I would rather you use the processing time for the Spaghetti Sauce than the Juice Blend though, since you are cooking it down thicker.