If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen, canning tomatoes.
I brought home several baskets of tomatoes from my parents' garden yesterday.
And a big ol' pressure canner.
So, my goal for today is to get all the tomatoes packed safely into jars. I haven't canned tomatoes since 1998, I think, but I am armed with an instruction manual so I think I'll be ok.
I'm not one to adore the canning process, but I am excited at the prospect of having a nice little stash of local, organic tomatoes in reusable glass jars.
And they'll be totally free except for the cost of some canning lids and a little electricity (but since I'm using a pressure canner, the jars don't even have to cook for very long).
So, breakfast, then a quick trip out to buy lids, and I'll be in business. Wish me luck!
____________________________
Today's 365 post: $150.99?
Joshua's 365 post: Sonia's Money
Very exciting! I love this time of year. A couple other things you can do with tomato overages when you don't feel like canning is freeze them or make lacto-fermented salsa. To freeze them, you just cut the stems off, freeze them on a single layer on a cookie sheet, and then put the frozen tomatoes in bags. When you're ready to use them, just run them under water and the skins peel off really easily, and then you can use them as you would canned tomatoes. And I love the LF salsa recipe at nourishingdays.com; I'm using it to use up all the blemished tomatoes since I can just cut the blemishes off. But your parents tomatoes look perfect, so probably not an issue.
I can see my rapidly approaching future in this post...when my 15 tomato plants (that we grew from seed! So proud.) eventually have something other than green bullets hanging from them.
That's going to be a lot of canning. And tomato eating.
Try roasting a jar or two. I discovered this on one of the myriad food blogs, and can't remember which one. Now I'm roasting all my tomatoes before getting them into their little jars. Tomato Heaven!!!
Good luck to you! I've been canning tomatoes from my garden as well. I've already made salsa and tomato basil soup. I love looking at those jars of tomatoes on my shelves. Can't wait to hear how your day goes!
🙂
can you post a picture of your canned tomatoes
Fabulous! Can't wait to see those jewely jars lined up 🙂
And *I'm* waiting to see *your* grape jelly.
Seriously. I'm pathetically excited.
I'm so ready for canning season, last night I got my first batch of salsa made! It was encouraging to come down stairs this morning and see all my pretty jars sitting there waiting to be put away. Up next: spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, and diced tomatoes for soups. Love. Summer!
We love making salsa and spaghetti sauce, though we haven't canned "just" tomatoes yet. If we have enough this year I might, since I love making jambalaya or other things with tomatoes.
Just canned 15 Qts of tomatoes. Nothing like looking at the fruits of your harvest. There is something fulfilling about canning vegatables and lining them up in your pantry. It's like having your little army lined up to conquer the winter months. (lol)
It's worth pressure canning them? A quart of tomatoes only needs maybe 15 minutes in the canner, a pint 5-10 minutes.
It does take care of any low-acid issues - today's tomatoes are bred to be so much less acid than before, the suggestion is out there to add a tsp of lemon juice to a quart of tomatoes to correct for any low-acid condition. Not enough to change the taste, except maybe to brighten it up just a tad.
I'm heading into tomato-canning and tomato-juice-canning season myself. The kitchen gets that bloodbath look, but it's worth it.
I just re-looked it up, and my ball canning book says that canned whole tomatoes need to be boiled in a hot water bath for 45 minutes. Is that old information?
Therese may have some old info. Hot or raw pack in jars w/ water the guidelines START at 45 minutes for a quart. Here is a link to the University of Georgia National Center for Food Preservation site w/ all the guidelines.
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/tomato_water_pack.html
If your canning book was written after 1989 you should be fine using the info in it. 1989 was when all the guidelines changed.
Sorry, I meant those times for the boiling water canner. How long in a pressure canner? 60 seconds?
Once it reaches pressure, the jars have to stay in for 10 minutes (that's for tomatoes...the cooking times vary for other produce).
Good luck! Pressure canners scare me, so I always can my tomatoes with a water bath canner. I canned sweet pickle relish yesterday, and tomatoes will be on the docket in the next few weeks.
Jealous! Something has been eating my tomatoes from the bottom up (scooping out the insides and leaving the shell). I'm hoping to get enough to can. Enjoy!
I've done pressure canning--it took about twenty minutes or so, as I recall. Also, Shoshana's right--roasting them really adds to the flavor. Ball has a good recipe for roasted roma tomatoes that you can can.
Does anyone really enjoy the actual canning process? Doubt it. But the sight of all those jars lined up for winter? Totally worth it.
I just have to keep reminding myself of that when I'm filling jar number 35 or whatever and I feel as if I never want to see another tomato again. Not there yet, though. Tomato fun to come!
just fyi: It isn't worth pressure canning tomatoes, once you count in the time to bring up to and come down from pressure (don't quick cool, not safe for canning) you actually spend more time than water bath canning, which is all tomatoes need, I do use a little lemon juice to cover possible ascidity issues.
Also, unless you puree them, pressure canned whole or chunked tomatoes get very mushy, due to the high temps.
And I can't tell from the pic, but that pressure cooker looks way too small to can in. Cookers need to be a certain size before you can use them to can in, canning times include a certain time to heat up and cool down to be safe and smaller cookers shorten that time. Like I said, I can't tell from here, but it looks way too small. I think you need at least a 16 qt canner to do quart jars, a 10 qt canner may be able to do 3 or 4 pints at a time, but that is a big time drain.
You can water bath can in any big pot where you can get two inches of boiling water over the jars.
Oh, it's big enough! My mom has used it for canning for years. It fits 7 quart jars. 🙂 In fact, the instruction manual calls it a pressure cooker/canner.
I usually use my canned tomatoes for applications where they don't need to be firm, so they've always worked great for me.
And since I don't own a pot large enough for the water to go two inches over the jars, my mom's canner is perfect for me (love free!).
You can make tomato paste from the excess juice, too. Just simmer down the juice till it's pasty.
Good luck and have fun! 🙂
Don't forget that a pressure canner needs to be calibrated every year and have its seals double checked. Beautiful tomatoes!
Is that a glass-top stove you have? I've cracked a few of those while canning until the guy from Sears who came to replace the top told me that canning is not recommended for that particular type of stove because of the excessive amount of time needed to do the entire canning process. I was not just a tiny bit ticked off that I now have a stove for people who don't really cook much.
Really? Oh dear. Hopefully mine will be ok.
I was always told not to use the big pressure canners on my glass top. My MIL sells them and she's seen several come back. I can with a water bath canner, and I have occasionally used my smaller pressure cooker for jams and such, but I'm not brave enough to try the big pressure cooker on my glass top.
Somehow I always manage to con my mom into doing it at her house, the canner and the tomatoes would come from there anyway, so we usually try to do ours together. Pressure canning is safer- I'd much rather be safe than sorry.
1. http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_home.html This website is a wonderful resource
2. I've canned for years using my glass top stove. I follow these recommendations:http://www.pickyourown.org/cannings4glasstop.htm I've never had an issue but I think one reason is that my particular stovetop has one burner that has the option to be "bigger" with the flip of a switch. So my canner is not wider than the actual burner by more than 0.25 of an inch all the way around.
Please share pictures of the finished product tomorrow!
I hope you take lots of pictures. I'm going to start canning soon and I need all the help I can get. Any suggestions and tips you come up with would be greatly appreciated.
I always think that if you have tomatoes, you really have almost everything you need for a great meal. Tomatoes are a staple in our household, there's something so comforting about them X
We are canning tomatoes here this week... It is something I do enjoy doing. My oldest daughter(11) and I have a good system going and it doesn't take long at all.. You do need 45min. in a water bath canner which is what we have. I have been doing "cold" pack with 1T lemon juice per qt. in the bottom. We are also canning peaches (from a local orchard) this week for the first time!
Wow good luck not all people have that kind of discipline any more.
Hope your canning went well - love the feeling of achievement after knocking over tasks like that (plus you'll be enjoying home grown tomatos for ages!). I'm much too lazy - I'd just be eating tomatos like crazy till they were gone ..
Last night I was doing tomatoes, sweet corn & peas. I was having a ball! I got more enjoyment from those hours than my full 8 hour day at my job.
Just curious..It appears you have a glass top stove? Do you have any issues with the pressure canner on that surface? I am concerned I may burn or crack mine.
thanks,