You could brown the ground meat by baking it on rimmed baking trays in the oven. (Side rims prevent grease from running off into the oven.) Lining the trays with tin foil will make cleanup easier.
The canned tomatoes can be purchased, or home-canned. Many manufacturers interpret diced in many different ways; some may be more liquidy than others, so interpret final yield as a rough guide. Bernardin even says just “canned tomatoes” (it’s Ball that specifies diced) so you could use whole, or crushed — again, your final yield may be greater based on your cans of tomatoes. Some manufacturers make crushed tomatoes that are watery; some interpret crushed tomatoes to be a semi-thick sauce. You may even wish to add extra tomatoes — that’s fine. It’s always fine to lower the density in pressure canning recipes.
Instead of fresh parsley, you can use 4 teaspoons of dried.
For the 1 tablespoon of dried herbs, you can use all of one herb, or, a mixture of dried herbs such as basil, thyme, oregano, etc. Or, a tablespoon of Italian seasoning.
The ginger and all-spice might seem odd, and you can leave them out if you wish, but they really do work well in this recipe.
The vinegar is just here for flavouring to waken the taste of the sauce up a bit, so you can use any vinegar you wish, such as white vinegar, red wine vinegar, sherry vinegar, etc. You could also use 2 tablespoons lemon juice if you wished.
People have asked: would it be safe to cut the tomato paste in half and the ground beef in half: yes, it would. You are reducing the density. In pressure canning, the big concern is the opposite: increasing the density. So don’t add more tomato paste or meat, or any mushrooms etc. (combine with a jar of your home-canned mushrooms upon opening, if desired.)
NUTRITION
Per 1 cup / 250 ml / 8 oz:
491 calories, 933 mg sodium
Weight Watchers PointsPlus: 12 points
Weight Watchers SmartPoints: 14 points
Sodium goes down to 175 mg per cup without the added salt.
