Sweet peppers in tomato sauce

[Chelsea]

I think I messed these up, I got a tons of sweet red peppers from my garden so I decided to first cook with with my garden fresh tomatoes adding only salt and sugar then put them all in pint jars with 1/4 citric acid and then into a water bath for 20min. Today I’ve been reading everyone puts vinegar in their pepper sauce. Are these bad now?

 

[jgcrawfo]

That really depends on how much acid you added. Is that 1/4 tbsp per jar or something?
If the ratio of tomatoes:peppers is high, it's probably OK. But if there are as many peppers as tomatoes, it might not be acidic enough.

 

[jgcrawfo]

I rarely use citric acid when canning tomatoes because I bought a pH meter to test the pH of my sauce. Whether it's citric acid or vinegar isn't that important, but how acidic it is is very important. Every bit of pepper you added makes the sauce less acidic, eating into your safety margin of pH.

 

[taxlady]

I rarely use citric acid when canning tomatoes because I bought a pH meter to test the pH of my sauce. Whether it's citric acid or vinegar isn't that important, but how acidic it is is very important. Every bit of pepper you added makes the sauce less acidic, eating into your safety margin of pH.

I like the idea of using a pH meter. What would be the correct pH for water bath canning?