How to Make Salsa in Bulk, With a Scaling Calculator

To make jarred salsa in bulk, write the recipe by weight as percentages, cook it in a kettle sized to the run, check the pH of every batch, and hot-fill the jars at the temperature your process sets. Shelf-stable salsa is an acidified food: the vinegar and lime that keep its pH down are part of a process a process authority approved, and they scale by percentage like everything else. Done this way, a salsa maker that cooked 20 pounds on the stove makes 560 pounds in a day, and the cost of a 16-ounce jar falls from $6.75 to $3.01. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the cook loss, what a jar costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.

The short version

• Weigh every ingredient once and turn the recipe into percentages.
• Keep the vinegar and lime shares the process set.
• Cook in a kettle sized to the run.
• Check and record the pH of every batch before filling.
• Hot-fill, cap, invert, and check every seal.
• Weigh what comes out and use your real cook loss to cost a jar.
• TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.

The recipe, by percentage

Saguaro Salsa Co., the made-up salsa maker in Tucson, Arizona, I use in these examples, cooked 20 pounds of salsa at a time until a grocer started ordering by the case. The recipe, weighed:

The 560 pounds cost $658.11 in ingredients. Tomatoes are most of the weight and most of the cost. The vinegar is a tenth of the weight, and it isn't there for taste alone: it's part of what keeps the pH where the process says. How the process is set is in process authority letter.

The steps, at 560 pounds

1. Prep by weight. Tomatoes cored and chopped, onions and chiles diced, all weighed against the recipe for each kettle.
2. Cook by the kettle. 280 pounds a cook, brought to the temperature the process sets and held.
3. Check the pH. On a meter calibrated that morning, below the process's limit, written on the batch; a batch that reads high gets more vinegar and a second reading. How to test is in pH testing for acidified foods.
4. Hot-fill. Jars filled at the process's fill temperature, capped and inverted to heat the lids.
5. Check the seals. Once cool, every lid pulled down; a jar that didn't seal is set aside, not sold.
6. Weigh what comes out. Over three runs, the kettles lose about 10% to steam.
7. Label with a lot code. Every jar from the run carries the run's lot and date.

The run takes two people about nine and a half hours each, 19 hours of labor, most of it prep.

What a jar costs at each size

Tomatoes by the 25-pound case and vinegar by the drum cut the ingredients by about two-fifths, and the labor falls by more than three-quarters, because a kettle takes about the same attention for 280 pounds as a stockpot for 20. The jar, lid and label become a third of a jar's cost. How the business grows from here is in how to start a salsa business.

The process, every batch

An acidified food is made under a process filed with FDA, supervised by someone trained at an approved school, and each batch's pH is recorded and kept (21 CFR 108.25, 114.10, 114.100). A bigger kettle doesn't change the process; a new recipe goes back to the process authority. The kitchen's plan is in salsa HACCP plan, and handing the cooking to someone else in salsa co-packers.

Get the calculator

Download the salsa scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the kettle cooks, what comes out after the cook loss, the jars it fills and the cost of each jar; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average cook loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Three salsas, a run every week, tomatoes from two growers, and a kettle that read high. A sheet can say how many tomatoes a run needs, but not which grower's tomatoes went into which run, what each batch's pH was, or whether the cook loss has crept up.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.

The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with tomatoes bought by the 25-pound case and used by the pound, and the cost of every jar comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the tomatoes, chiles and jars on the shelf allow.

Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of tomatoes and chiles it used, and gets a lot of its own for the jars, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.

Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a cook loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A case of tomatoes that went soft is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.

Recipes, batches, lots and yield are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

How do you make salsa in large batches?

Write the recipe as percentages, cook it in a kettle, check the pH on every batch, and hot-fill the jars at the temperature your process sets.

How much salsa does a 40-gallon kettle make?

In the example, 280 pounds a cook, about 250 sixteen-ounce jars after the cook loss.

Do I need a process authority to sell jarred salsa?

Shelf-stable salsa is an acidified food, so its process comes from a process authority and is filed with FDA; refrigerated fresh salsa is a different product.

How much does it cost to make salsa in bulk?

In the example, $3.01 a 16-ounce jar in a 560-pound run, against $6.75 in a kitchen batch.