Newbie - Need Advice if not following a "tested" recipe

I'm considering purchasing a pressure canner for canning tomato (pasta) sauce.  
My ingredients are
Tomatoes
Garlic
Olive oil
Sugar
Salt
Basil

I keep reading that you want to use tested recipes.  However, I would think that if you've sanitized your equipment, jars, etc. and are cooking sauce for several hours and then put it into the jars and into a pressure cooker for the right amount of time, then using a tested recipe wouldn't matter.  What am I missing?      I guess, another way to ask my question is.... Putting taste and texture aside, are you ok canning a wide variety of your own recipes and/or types of food as long as you heat it to the right temp for the right duration.  

I've got some killer sauce...

For canning, I usually use a recipe ...

Several factor come into play most for timing ...

Seems like there would be recipes that use those ingredients ...

I have ended up with the practice of preserving the separate ingredients and mixing as I prepare the final product.  I find spices can produce odd tastes in the pressure canner. Sugar and salt don’t need to be preserved. Basil can be dehydrated. Garlic can be dehydrated or stored in olive oil.

Tested recipes are significantly safer for warer bath canning in order to ensure the acidity is high enough for the lower temperature that a water bath canner can safely process. Pressure canning, as you noted that you’re doing, is a different kettle of jars entirely. With that, there’s a few guidelines I follow:
1.  look up the canning times for each item in your ingredients list and process for whichever time is the longest, no matter how little of that item is in each jar
2. pay attention to which things have no tested safe method, or must be in a specific form (pieces of squash rather than purée, for example)
3.  for soups, follow the “at least half the jar is liquid (broth, water)” rule if the recipe isn’t tested

For tomato sauces, if you’re within the proportions of types of things in a tested recipe, then you’re golden. Onion and garlic are interchangeable, acidity-wise. So are herbs. Alcohol doesn’t affect the acidity one way or the other. Vinegars are acidic; add all you like. Where things get dicey is if you increase the proportion of alliums or other vegetables in the sauce; then you want to follow guideline #1 above. If your proportions of ingredients are the same, go with the timing on a tested recipe.

I’m a pretty cautious canner because I knew someone who died of botulism. It’s rare, but it’s a nasty way to go.

Hi.
There's an online guide about all this.
Short story: acidic food can be treated with lower temperatures, pressure-canning is really only needed for low-acid food. In this case, you need to be sure that you've killed any trace of the butolitic bacteria, that's why the recipes: they say the minimum cooking time for safety. You can cook for more time, but it will decrease the quality.
So, if you don't happen to have the recipes, and you absolutely need to can, and the food is low-acid, then, you can treat it for 4 hours and error on the safe side.

FWIW - I believe a rolling boil for at least 20 minutes will kill botulism. That would not be easy to do with sauce, but with other canned items, you could.

Onions and their family do seem to be one ingredient I've read concerns about.

The other issue is that many tomato varieties appear to have less acidity than they did 100 years ago - we keep "improving" fruit and veg to be sweeter!

One sure fire way to check if your sauce is safe to can is to get the correct paper strips and "test" the acid level before canning. So long as you're at or better than the target for a certain time at pressure, everything should be safe. If the acid level is in the wrong direction, rather than risking "close enough" and someone getting sick, I would splash in some vinegar to adjust it.

I often advise "Do as I say, not as I do."  That being said the common recommendation from the USDA is to use tested recipes.  However, I'm an outlaw and have canned pretty much everything over many years.  Some things to consider.  The cut-off for safe waterbath canning is 4.5ph.  Anything above that needs to be pressure canned. That's one bit of advice I adhere to. Part of the problem with the USDA recommendations is that they're restricted by funding.  It's basically non-existent for home food preservation research.  So, if they don't have the research they can't recommend a practice.  Funding pretty much ran out in the 80's.  Your cooking time really doesn't figure into preservation time, so extended cooking is just loss of quality.  If it were me, I would go with the ingredient with the longest processing time and make sure to adjust for altitude.  Also keep in mind product density.  A super dense product won't conduct heat as well as a looser one.  Good luck.  

Hi Matt,

As a canning newbie, it's a good idea to follow a recipe.

A recipe will help preserve a successful season's tomato harvest, with jars that sealed, with contents safe to eat, with a pleasant taste and texture.

If you are able, hands-on experience is helpful.  I took a class offered by our CSA, then offered to help folks when they were putting up their own produce.  

The Pick your own website has a lot of great information:

https://www.pickyourown.org/tomato_recipes.htm

Also, the Ball books of canning:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0778801314


https://www.amazon.com/All-Ball-Book-Canning-Preserving/dp/0848746783

You want to

if you are pressure canning and follow the directions you can can pretty much anything.

invest in a good pressure canner with room - an all american 921 is a great model. practice the canning process with small batches until you are confident with your ability to pressure can... then try and see how you like the results...

if you have some killer sauce already cooked i suspect it will do well in jars - no meat means a much shorter time - you would be doing 25 mins @ 15 psi after warmup..

so emphasis from my opinion is on nailing the process... it was daunting for me at first, 15 years i am comfortable canning everything (incl trout - SUPER yum)...

canning is fantastic for certain harvests this time of year.. zucchinni overload? cook in water and a few spices, puree and can in quarts... superb soup base for winter etc. etc.

go for it and best of luck - cheers!

The main thing is the acidity of your tomatoes. Tomatoes can vary a lot in their acidity, and that’s why tested recipes often include adding extra acid like lemon juice or vinegar. This is to make sure the pH is low enough to keep harmful bacteria like botulism at bay. If your recipe doesn’t account for this, you might not be making it acidic enough.Also, the processing time and pressure in the canner are crucial. They’re based on the recipe to ensure that all harmful bacteria are killed. Different ingredients can affect how long and at what pressure you need to process the jars. So, even if your sauce is amazing, if it’s not processed right, it could still be risky.