Canning Tomatoes

The next night, I decided to try canning the rest of the full-sized tomatoes.  This is my first attempt at canning tomatoes, and only my third attempt at canning, period.  Previous efforts with pickles and pear butter were somewhat disappointing.

 

I turned to the internet, and found some instructions that seemed reasonable from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.  I reviewed their instructions on Using Boiling Water Canners, along with the instructions at the beginning of my Ball Home Canning Basics book.  Then I followed their instructions for Canning Crushed Tomatoes.

 

The longest part of this whole process is getting the big canner full of water to boil.  Maybe next time I should try putting smaller pots of water on all four burners to boil, then combining them in the canner.  It took what seemed like hours to get that thing going. 

 

In the meantime, I started preparing tomatoes.  I had never blanched tomatoes before.  I thought it was kind of fun.  I used a fine mesh strainer to dip about five tomatoes at a time into boiling water for a minute or two, then into cold water with a few ice cubes for another minute.  Since I was doing them only five at a time, this was pretty time consuming, too.

 

 

Blanching was followed by peeling and quartering.  I wasn't sure if I should seed them, so I mostly left the seeds in, whenever they didn't just fall out.

 

 

At some point I had boiling water in the canner and all my tomatoes cut and ready.  I boiled my jars and lids for 10 minutes, and got the tomatoes started cooking on the stove.  When it was finally time to fill the jars, I took a few liberties.

 

First, I'm not 100% sure I had the exact correct amount of head space.  Here's hoping I got close enough.

 

Second, the folks at Ace Hardware up the street (where I had picked up my jars earlier that night) had assured me that I didn't need to add extra lemon juice or citric acid to get to the required level of acidity.  Since they didn't have these thngs and I didn't want to make an extra trip to a grocery store, I decided to believe them.  They told me the worst thing that could happen is that I'd smell that a jar had gone bad and have to throw it out--I was in no danger of accidentally eating botulism-laced tomatoes.

 

Finally, I processed the jars for 35 minutes according to the recipe.  I gave a few extra minutes for good measure.

 

Here's my final product.  Several hours of work, and what seemed like a massive bounty of tomatoes, cooked down to four and a half jars of crushed tomatoes and one freezer bag of oven-roasted cherry tomatoes.  (For the professionals among my readers, don't worry, that half-jar didn't get processed, it's sitting in my fridge to be used this week).