Canning Tomatoes

Last weekend, I bought a 10 lb box of Beefsteak tomatoes to try my hand at tomato canning. I joined forces with fellow CSA subscriber Mrs. Pepper, who is my mentor in domestic kitchen skills. We spent an evening of mad canning (and jamming) and I happened to take pictures of the process for you. It’s really not that hard. You just need a pot big enough to cover quart jars with water, some fresh lids and some time. Here’s how it went.

First, get your tomatoes. We are offering 10 and 20 pound boxes of Beefsteak and Saladette/Early Girl tomatoes from our web store. I chose the Beefsteak because I love the taste of them and I figured the larger sized tomato would amount to less peeling. The smaller Saladette and Early Girl tomatoes work well for canning too.

Our chef Andrew must have been reading my mind because he sent in a bonus essay on how to peel, seed and filet tomatoes this week with his recipes.  Here is what he says about peeling tomatoes:

To peel:
Bring a saucepan of water to a boil. Use a thin sharp knife to cut an “X” at the bottom of the tomato. Do not cut into the flesh, just slice the skin if possible. Use a knife and cut out the core at the top. Or not. (There are handy little tools that look like toothed melon ballers that actually work surprisingly well for this.) There are different schools of thought on this. I frequently find the skin is easier to remove when this is cut out, but not always. Once the water is boiling, carefully put the tomatoes into the water. Cook for 15 seconds or so, then remove them. Keep the water going in case you need to dunk the tomatoes again.

Give the tomatoes a quick rinse in cold water (we used ice water) to stop the cooking, and using a small knife, peel the skin off starting at the slits you made on the bottom. If the skin still seems very tightly attached, put the tomatoes back in the boiling water for a few seconds and repeat as above. Depending on the tomato, blanching time will vary. I think the skins differ from one type to another, plus I feel ripeness will effect how the skin adheres as well.

We did not seed or filet the tomatoes for this project, but please check out Andrew’s directions if you would like to hone those skills.

We were going for a basic marinara sauce.  We debated adding other veggies such as mushrooms or peppers, but decided on a just a basic sauce that could be amended with the addition of meat or vegetables at the time of use. Since we had so many tomatoes, we decided on doing two separate batches. That way we could slightly alter the taste of each batch. First, we sauteed a bunch of onions. Once they were slightly carmelized, we added in some carrots and celery and sauteed some more. Then, we added in the tomatoes (peeled and quartered), along with herbs from the garden (basil and oregano), and a bay leaf. The potato masher was called upon to mash it up, then the two pots were put on the back burner on a low simmer for a couple of hours while we made two batches of jam, a batch of fresh-pressed white grape jelly, and shared a bottle of Chardonnay.

After all that was done, we tasted the sauces. Even though we went through the same process for both batches, each had a slightly different taste already. One was more tart and tangy but tasted alright already (probably started with more onions on that batch), and the other one was a little too acidic. Time for two tasting spoons and a little magic. What does each sauce need to make it delicious? A bit of sugar to cut the acidity, definitely more salt and pepper, more oregano and basil and some “low note” to add another dimension. We kept the tart and tangy vegetarian, but added a bit of beef base to the other one. Finally, we were satisfied with the flavor and it was time to prepare the jars.

Sanitization in canning is very important. If you are going to pack away food, unrefrigerated, for an indefinite time period, you don’t want to start out with a bunch of bacteria. We washed our jars in hot soapy water then placed them in boiling water for ten minutes, boiling the lids as well. Once that is done, we put our fresh jars on a clean towel and used a funnel to pour the sauce into the sanitized jars, leaving about a half-to-quarter inch space in the jar. It was helpful to have a friend to move the funnel from jar to jar for maximum efficiency. Once the jars are filled, we added several drops of lemon juice to each jar, cleaned the rim with a clean paper towel and placed the sanitized lids on the top, screwing on the lids just enough to close it, but not super tight. Then we placed the jars back into the boiling water to seal. With a quart size jar, we boiled the filled jars at least a half hour.

Once they were sealed, we removed them from the water and felt satisfied and proud for our job well done. One 10 lb box of tomatoes yielded about 3 and a half quarts.