when you're canning tomato sauce it's
really important to make sure that the
sauce's ph falls in the sweet spot which
is under 4.6 to prevent botulism or
other nasty food-borne illnesses
now since tomatoes come in varying
degrees of acidity we need to call on
another acid to help it out
we use vinegar lemon juice citric acid
all will work in varying
proportions so in our big batch tomato
sauce we use eight tablespoons of red
wine vinegar
to eight quarts of tomato sauce for a
ratio of one tablespoon per quart
with this much tomato sauce it's
unlikely that you're going to taste red
wine vinegar but if you prefer to use
another acid that's fine
if you're going to use lemon juice you
want to substitute two tablespoons of
lemon juice per quart of sauce or a half
teaspoon of citric acid per quart of
sauce and the effect should be the same