Homemade Copycat Pace Picante Salsa Recipe That is Perfect For Canning
Homemade Copycat Pace Picante Sauce is a favorite at our house. We LOVE pace salsa. But I wanted it to be a little healthier and I wanted to use our garden veggies before they went bad.

This Pace Picante recipe is a great one to use for canning. You can make big batches of it and can it all in 1 day and have the salsa for the rest of the year. It is easy to make and easy to can! You can even make it in smaller batches if you are making it with garden veggies and don’t have enough.
I was so happy with how things turned out. I used a copycat recipe for Pace Picante Salsa found HERE. I changed the tomato sauce to 1/2 tomato sauce and 1/2 crushed tomatoes.
Copycat Pace Picante Sauce Recipe
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1 (28 ounce) can tomato sauce
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28 ounces water
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2 fresh jalapeno peppers, with seeds,minced
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1⁄4 cup white vinegar
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1 teaspoon salt
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1 tablespoon dried onion flakes
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1⁄2 teaspoon garlic powder
Instructions
- Add all ingredients into a saucepan in order of ingredients list.
- Bring ingredients to a boil in a saucepan over med-high heat.
- Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until thick.
- Remove from heat and cool.
- Ladle salsa into jars or airtight for canning or storage
- If storing, store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator until serving.
- If canning, follow the instructions below.
Step By Step of How is Pace Picante sauce made?
First I took all my tomatoes and peppers and an onion. the tomatoes were cut in 1/4ths and the peppers and onion were diced. It is important to include the seeds in the peppers with the salsa. This is where most of the taste comes from.
Then I blended up the tomatoes and combined that with cans of tomato sauce in the pot.
Then let it boil on the stove until it thickens up. (I made a couple different batches of this and noticed that you have to boil it a bit more the the recipe says when using the crushed tomatoes)
Printable Pace Salsa Recipe

Copycat Pace Picante Salsa Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 can Tomato Sauce 15 oz
- 1 can Crushed Tomatoes 15 oz; Can use Fresh tomatoes and crush in blender
- 28 OZ Water
- 1 medium Yellow Onion minced
- 2 Jalapeno Peppers With Seeds, Minced
- 1/4 Cup White Vinegar
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tbsp Dried Onion Flakes
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
Instructions
- Add all ingredients into a saucepan in order of ingredients list.
- Bring ingredients to a boil over med-high heat.
- Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes or until thick.
- Remove from heat and cool.
- Ladel into jars with air tight lids to can or store
- If storing, jar in the refrigerator until serving.
- If canning, follow the canning instruction below.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
I then put the Pace Picante sauce recipe in jars and boiled water on the stove in the canner to seal the jars. This takes a while to do so I started to boil the water just before the salsa was done.
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That sounds like a great idea. I LOVE Pace salsa and had never thought of making it myself before. Where did you get your canner? I'd love to pickle some veggies this fall, but I would certainly need a canner for that. Can you find them at grocery stores?
Also, do you know is the salsa recipe is for mild, medium or hot?
The salsa recipe is really mild. I had to add more jalapenos to my second batch to make it a bit hotter. we like spicy salsa!
The canner I borrowed from my mom who has had it for years! I saw canning stuff at Walmart this year though. will look for more online or in stores as well and do a food storage friday post on it in the future.
How long do you water bath the jars?
40 mins for pints and 45 for quarts
Is it possible to freeze the sauce instead of canning it?
thanks!
I have never frozen it so I am not sure how the consistency would be when defrosted. But I think all the ingredients freeze ok so it may be worth a try!
How long do you water bath the pace picante recipe?
Thanks
I do 15 minutes.
Great recipe, I added one teaspoon of sugar and mine tastes just like pace but even better!
One post says water bath punts 40 minutes, 45 minutes for quarts. In another post you say 15 minutes. Which is it?
I am not seeing where it says 40 or 15. It only says to boil the salsa 30 mins before putting it in the jars.
We like Pace Picante sauce, so I want to can my own. Your recipe says you wanted to use veggies from your garden, but the recipe is cans of tomatoes and tomato sauce. Do I just weigh/measure my garden Romas at 28 oz and calculate everything else from that? I have LOTS of tomatoes!
I blended my tomatoes into sauce and then measured out the ounces. If you want to make them crushed, just make the fresh crushed tomatoes and then measure out the OZ. Hope that helps!
Every time I make your recipe I make a mistake reading your recipe.
First time I made it it did not taste like Pace. But I put it in the the fridge because after all it was a salsa. A week later it started tasting like Pace and two weeks later it was really like Pace Picante I used to buy all the time.
So why 2 weeks makes a big difference? Jalapeno Peppers!!!!
So the next time I made it I used a can of crushed tomatoes and a can of diced tomatoes and marinaded Jalapeno Peppers instead of fresh. I removed seeds because seeds are not good for the stomach. Once cooled it can be used right away and it tastes just like Pace. Fresh Jalapeno Peppers can’t cook in 30 minutes anyway and I am sure then Pace is made it sits in the jar for a while by the time you buy it in the store.