Why go to all the work of canning tomatoes? The above reasons speak for themselves, but it is so cost effective to grow your own produce and process it yourself. For a few hours time, you can have a decent store of your own canned tomato products. Salsa, pasta sauce, juice, puree, chunks, etc. It has been worth it for me to process my own foods at home. The knowledge in invaluable for times when a trip to the store isn't possible.
Equipment needed:
Pint canning jars with lids and rings
8 quart stock pot
steam or water bath canner
large slotted spoon
steam juicer-if you are making sauce or juice with your tomatoes
sharp knife
large mixing bowl and ice water
Instructions:
Start by picking tomatoes that are very ripe. They will have the most flavor and be tender to the touch. If you have tomatoes that have some blemishes on them, don't worry. Most of those blemishes are skin deep and you will discover they come right off when you peel the skin off the tomato.
Fill the stock pot 2/3 with water, then boil the water.
Once the water has come to a boil, place the tomatoes in the water to blanch.
Remove the tomatoes once their skins have burst and you see splitting of the outer skin. This takes anywhere from 5-7 minutes. As you add new tomatoes it will take a few minutes for the water to come to a boil again.
Remove the split skin tomatoes and place in the ice water bath to cool.
Once you can handle the tomato, remove the core and then peel the skin off. In some cases the skins will just come right off in your hands.
At this point you can go in any direction you want with the tomatoes. Simply filling the pint jars with whole tomatoes is an option, or you can quarter or dice them and put them in the jars. Cook them in the water bath or steam canner for the prescribe amount of time and viola, canned tomatoes!
In this post I will show you how to make tomato sauce and tomato juice using the steam juicer.
1. Place the peeled tomatoes in the top basket of the steam juicer.
2. Assemble the steam juicer and place on the stove to cook.
3. Cook tomatoes for about 1 hour on the stove until the tomatoes have cooked down some and the juice reservoir is full of tomato juice.
4. Once the cooking is finished, the juice can be ladled into quart jars and then canned in the water bath or steam canner for 40 minutes.
Tomato Sauce
1. Spoon the cooked tomatoes out of the top basket of the steam juicer and strain. There are many different types of strainers on the market. Find one that works best for you. I find the manual one I have from my grandmother's kitchen gets the best results. I want the most product from my cooked foods and this way yields the best results. I find the strainers that have a hand crank let too much of the pulp go to waste.
2. You can season your sauce if you like by using a recipe from the Ball or Kerr canning books or use a recipe of your own. I find that canning the sauce untouched works better for my recipes. This way I can season the sauce to work in whatever I am cooking.
3. Spoon the strained pulp into your pint jars and process in the steam or water bath canner for 35 minutes.
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