Putting Food By Focus: Canning Tomatoes
I’ve got 30 pounds of peaches and a 1/2 bushel of tomatoes with my name on it today so I thought I’d share this from last year.
I am standing at the counter moving my way through a little dance: dunk, remove, peel, chop. I see no color but red until my eyes refocus. Three feet away from me stands this man I married five years ago. He cracks jokes while he fills jars with steaming red and I laugh until it hurts. Somehow my fingers avoid the paring knife.
The next day I am in the same space, apron on and hair a mess. He comes through the back door, I turn to look at him with hands covered in red. He tells me "you’re beautiful." I smile and blush, the same color as my constant red companions.
Over the long weekend we canned forty nine quarts of tomatoes. Two days, lots of boiling water, and a sea of red later I know what I’ll remember in January when I crack open a jar. It won’t be the hours on my feet or the burning fingers as I peeled. I’ll remember him making me laugh, kissing me on the cheek, and saying "you’re beautiful."
My Tomato-Canning Process
Notes: This is only my second year canning tomatoes so please check with a trusted source on processing methods and times. I chatted with Suzy last week, asking for advice on the simplest way to put up tomatoes. She shared her process, which is the basis for mine. The tomatoes I canned over the weekend came from a local farmer, of whom I forgot to ask the variety. As a precaution I used citric acid (lemon juice works too) in each jar, in case one of my bushels contained a lower-acid tomato.
Prepare pots. Fill a medium-sized pot with water and bring to a simmer. Fill canner about half full and begin heating. Fill large pot halfway full with water and bring to a simmer. Place large pot on stove ready for tomatoes.
Wash tomatoes.
Peel and chop. Place whole tomato in simmering water for 30-60 seconds. Remove and place on towel for a few seconds until cool enough to handle. Slash skin and peel. Remove any bad spots in tomato and chop into bite-sized pieces.
Cook tomatoes. Place tomatoes in a very large pot. Bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes.
Scald jars. Bring a large pot of water to a low simmer. Place jars and lids (two at a time) in water until ready to be filled.
Fill jars. Once tomatoes have been brought to a boil and jars have been scalded you can begin filling the jars. Take a jar out of the simmering water, add 1 heaping teaspoon of sea salt and 1/4 teaspoon citric acid. Ladle tomatoes into jar using a food funnel. Leave 1 1/2 – 2 inches of headspace. Take lid from simmering water and place on jar. Add ring and secure. Lower jar into water bath canner. Repeat until canner is filled with seven jars.
Process. Cover jars by 2 inches with simmering water and replace lid. Allow to come to a full boil and then turn the timer on for 45 minutes. When timer goes off remove lid and turn off heat. After five minutes remove jars from water bath and place on thick towel. Allow to cool and seal before stashing away for the winter.
How are you preserving tomatoes?
I’ve done 4 boxes of tomatoes so far this season, 1 was paste and the rest were sauce. I would recommend a sauce master or the kitchen aid attachment that works the same way if you want to do sauce or paste. It makes it so easy. My 11 year old son cut the tomatoes while I fed them through the machine. Then it’s just a matter of cooking them down and canning like you do. And I always use lemon juice too…just in case.
On labor day I had a marathon session – made basic tomato sauce, zucchini relish, pizza sauce, salsa, and bruschetta preserve.
I do mine in a pressure canner so that I don’t need the citric acid. Is that method bad for the tomatoes?
And 49 quarts, WOW! I did 30 this year broke up into many days…so much work! I love them, but would much rather can potatoes 🙂
@kara bagley,
Kara, you should still acidify your tomatoes even though you pressure canned them to ensure safety. This info comes from the USDA Home Canning Guide Bulletin # 539. Also check out http://www.ugu.edu/ncfhp for more canning information.
Kara – I believe you can do it either way. I have never used a pressure canner so I am no expert.
This was my first year canning tomatoes. I did two boxes and would have liked to do more. Next year… 🙂
What a sweet post! We both have awesome hubbies then – mine always tells me I look beautiful when my hair is mess and I am standing over a simmering pot in the kitchen.
I bought bpa-free canning lids and tried my hand at some tomato canning last night! It’s messy, but worth it to avoid using the conventionally canned stuff all winter long.
This is my first year preserving, so I’ve tried a lot of new things: lacto-fermented salsa, blanching and freezing, making jars of marinara to freeze. Freezing is infinitely easier on this side of things, although I prefer to have food shelf-stable in case of emergency. I’m hoping to get a few rounds of canning in soon.
Rebecca – I so appreciate you pointing me to these lids. We are definitely going to get some!
oh Shannon – you are so making me want to do more preserving. Next year for sure!
I did 9 quarts of tomatoes this year (was all the tomatoes I could get- a bunch from the farmer’s market and some from my mom, my own crop was pathetic this year) and decided that if I ever DID have more tomatoes I might just shoot myself if I had to spend that much more time blanching, peeling, and seeding (because I can’t NOT seed them, it’s stupid because it’s an aesthetic thing) that many tomatoes. So bought a food mill and am sacrificing chunky tomatoes for an easier process.
Of course, had I not done my tomatoes at night I may not have been so frustrated. My process is pretty much the same, except that I cool the tomatoes in cold water before peeling, and I prep my jars and lids a little differently- I boil ALL the jars at once, leaving them in the water until I’m ready to use them. I put the lids in a glass bowl nearby. When I’m ready to fill I pull the jars out, dumping one or two jars of boiling water over the lids. I’ve done it many different ways over the years and this way works well for me.
I have a question- anyone else have a film develop on their jars (inside and out) when they scald them? I know it’s from my hard water, but does this affect the product and is there anything I can do about it, like putting vinegar in the water?
Brandis – I have found that it is much more satisfying to do at least 2 rounds in the canner – 14 quarts or pints. Because of all of the dirtying and boiling you have to do it just makes more sense. I have also been canning tomatoes from a local farmer, not from my own garden, so that makes having a bushel of tomatoes a bit easier. The film is due to your hard water; I get that too. I don’t think it will affect your final product, it’s basically a mineral build up. Happy canning!
Congrats on the 49 cans. AWESOME!
Once we got to 60+ cans this year, we started drying tomatoes, too.
Nice in pesto and salads over the winter.
It’s easy a bit less messy than canning.
Here’s how:
http://www.tomatodirt.com/drying-tomatoes.html
I am not canning but freezing and hopefully ( if any come in that are not spoiled by all this rain) dry some for sundried. I also made a feremented salsa, which was the first time I tried it- it turned out great and may make another batch of that. I wash the tomatoes, but them on a cookie sheet that fits in the freezer ( in a single layer). Then when they are frozen, I put them in a freezer bag and date them. You can take out one or two for some flavor or defrost the whole bag to make sauce. When they defrost,the skins slip off easily and the seeds are also easy to remove. More nutrition is preserved this way, although I realize you need electric. Will be making some sauerkraut soon as the local cabbage starts showing up in the market.
49 quarts! That’s super! Thanks for the insight on the process. I may get to it yet this summer.
I freeze them too, but it does take up a lot of freezer space. I use the same method as Susan. It works great: I pop a bunch of frozen tomatoes into a bit of boiling water for tomatoe soup up until the New Year!
So pretty! I love those bright red jars!
I can TONS of tomatoes. We probably canned 300 lbs from the garden last year. My method is MUCH streamlined, since we do can so much. I exclusively can Romas. I wash them, and then throw them in the food processor and pulse them to a crushed consistency. No peeling. No coring. No blanching. We like the consistency just fine, and THEY ARE WAY EASIER.
Then, I pressure can them. I have gone to pressure canning all my tomatoes because you do not have to add acid. Also, I have a ginormous pressure canner that will do 19 quarts in one batch. I raw pack and then pressure can my quarts for 30 minutes.
Here is a website that give good information on pressure canning tomatoes:
http://www.canning-food-recipes.com/canning_tomatoes.htm
Since I am pressure canning, I also do large batches of marinara sauce, salsa, and tomato soup. You’ve gotta get creative when you have tomatoes coming out your ears and, due to our short growing season, they are ALL ripe at once!
Here is a link to my favorite pressure canned salsa:
http://annieskitchengarden.blogspot.com/2009/08/august-15-2009-99-jars-of-food-on-wall.html
Most of my tomatoes are green still, but I have maybe 10 that are ready to be processed, and just because I am impatient and know my jars won’t last long in my house, I’m going to make some sauce tomorrow. Just the idea of the smell of simmering tomatoes makes my mouth water, I can’t wait!