Here is my 2nd contribution to the Summer Fest via Pinch My Salt and her band of food blogging friends!
This week’s theme: Tomatoes
My contribution: Canned Tomatoes
Let me start off by shouting with a loud–YELL—this is a LOT of work!
However, totally & utterly WORTH it.
I canned my bootie off for TWO days.
First few jars were from my own little garden stash. San Marzano Tomatoes.
2nd round: 2 BUSHELS of Roma Tomatoes picked up at Corrado’s Market.
How did I do it?
Well first of all a big thanks to honey do, my dad, and nephew for being on toddler duty.
I did it by begging my local Italian friends to tell me their homegrown secrets on how they can tomatoes. I also read and researched via the internet and this is what I came up with. I think I pretty much winged it as I went along. But the results were pretty good. The only way to really make it happen is to setup stations and rotate around as you go.
Multitasking helps too. Everything revolved around the measurement of one colander and one water bath.
Here is the lowdown on how one attempts to can tomatoes alone.
For Canned Unseasoned Tomato Sauce
- Setup water bath for processing to start boiling
- Make sure all jars are in dishwasher cleaned, sterilized, and ready to go
- Setup small pot of boiling water for lids
- Setup pot for simmering tomatoes and reused for boiling down sauce
- Setup up tomato mill/food grinder
- Setup cutting station
- Have Kosher Salt ready
- Have basil washed and ready
- Wash tomatoes in colander
- Slice tomatoes in quarters (remove stems and put in compost bin)
- Place slices in sauce pot and simmer tomatoes until soft
- Remove from sauce pot and push through mill (it separates skin and seeds from tomato sauce)
- Place sauce back in sauce pot, bring to a boil, simmer until desired thickness
- Place basil and salt in jar
- Ladle sauce into jar
- Once full, push out air bubbles, clean around jar
- Take boiled lids out of water and seal jar
- Process in water bath (put potato in water bath, when potato is done then processing is done)
- Remove and cool
- Check in 24 hours for proper seal
For Canned Whole Tomatoes
- Setup water bath for processing to start boiling
- Make sure all jars are in dishwasher cleaned, sterilized, and ready to go
- Setup small pot of boiling water for lids
- Setup boiling water for blanching and cold water bath for cooling
- Setup cutting station
- Have Kosher Salt ready
- Have basil washed and ready
- Wash tomatoes in colander
- Blanch tomatoes for about 3 minutes in boiling water
- Transfer to cold water bath
- Peel tomatoes (make sure not to burn yourself)
- Slice tomatoes in quarters
- Place a couple pinches of salt and a basil leaf in bottom of canning jar
- Place sliced tomatoes in jar, stuff jar, pushing out some liquid as you go.
- Once full, push out air bubbles, clean around jar
- Take boiled lids out of water and seal jar
- Process in water bath (put potato in water bath, when potato is done then processing is done)
- Remove and cool
- Check in 24 hours for proper seal
Because I had soooo many tomatoes, I basically had multiple stations going at once. Starting with a colander of tomatoes to wash and ending with the processing in the water bath. It was kind of a learn as you go thing and I went at a pace that worked for me.
When I was exhausted and couldn’t do anymore. I gave Honey-Do a sauce pot of extra tomatoes and put him to work. He made about 6 glass containers of meat sauce that we froze. BTW, his meat sauce is ridiculously good.
All in all it was worth the 43 jars of tomatoes and sauce that I made. I think that the best way to tackle this is with group of friends and large quantities of alcohol; which of course would need to be consumed. Seriously though, I think the work output and the amount of jars that I would have been able to keep would have been double if we had teamed up. Split up the cost, split up the work. It’s a win, win. My friends told me that their parents did (one still does) about 20-40 bushels of tomatoes a year!
Holy tomato!
Yep, I want to do that.
My friends, you know who you are, see you next year!
Oh and can we pick the coolest day in August next year and not the hottest? Thanks.
Thanks to LM, LR, and GM for all your advice!
ps…feel free to point out all the things I did wrong. I really don’t mind. 🙂