We just had our most recent skill-share... Tomato Canning! We went to our local farmer's market and got about 50lbs of tomato seconds. A "second" is any tomato that's been bruised, dented, split, or a few days too old for the farm stand to be able to sell. Often times farmers have lots and lots of these tomatoes at the end of each day, and will give you a very good deal if you ask them. Here we are weighing a portion of our tomatoes (about 10 lbs):
We followed several good canning recipes to make Garden Tomato Salsa, Yellow Tomato and Corn Salsa, Chunky Basil Tomato Sauce, and Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce.
A few, simple, but important things to note about canning (as we do it here):
1) We only do hot water bath canning (as opposed to pressure canning). This means that we only process acidic foodstuffs like tomatoes and fruit or make it acidic as we do in pickles and salsas by adding vinegar, lemon juice, etc... It's important to make sure any recipes you are following are for water bath canning (and are acidic enough). If just canning tomatoes, it's a good idea to add 2 tbsp of lemon juice per quart to make sure you have the right acidity... some tomatoes that are hybrids, unripe, or a few days too old might be borderline to being too basic.
2) We peel, skin, core and chop our tomatoes. To peel tomatoes, put whole tomatoes in boiling water for a 30 seconds, then take out and let cool for a minute or two. The skin should come right off. If you have two people doing this, it works great. James will often boil the tomatoes and I skin and chop.
3) Keep your surface areas clean! Have clean, freshly washed jars ready for ladling hot tomato sauce into. You can reuse jar top rings, but the tops you must use fresh each time.
4) What about scary contamination issues? The scary stuff (botulism, etc...) that can contaminate your products and survive boiling water temperatures, cannot handle high acidity. By working with high acidity foods (and processing it correctly) you rule out a lot of the scariest contaminants... isn't that nice? If you want to can low acidity food, you need to use a reliable pressure canner that can get to higher temperatures that boiling water.
5) There are many canning resources out there that will give you a great overview. Here's are two good ones I'd recommend checking out:
The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard
Preserve It! ; Bottled Fruit, Jams and Jellies, Pickles, Cured Meats by Lynda Brown
We didn't get a picture of the final dinner or of all the many hands that chopped, sliced and diced, but next time we will. For dinner we had stuffed shells for tasting all the different tomato sauces we'd just made, spicy green beans, bean salad, bread and cheese with ice cream and peach bread for dessert. Such a feast! Summer is such a wonderful time of the year with so many fresh tastes, bright colors and tantalizing smells... It's exciting to preserve a piece of summer in a jar and bring out again come winter. Thank you to all who helped us can tomatoes this year!
