Canned Tomatoes

Fresh from the garden.

 I've been slowly making changes to my diet and
cooking habits over the past few years. This cooking blog is part of that effort. The basic idea - learning to cook - leads to eating out less - leads to more say in what's in my food - leads to eating fewer processed foods.

I never had an interest before in cooking and definitely no interest in canning, preserving, or avoiding the store bought goods. But I guess I'm getting older, or maybe interests just change in your lifetime. My grandmother has canned food for our family as long as I can remember. Cherries, peaches, tomatoes, all set up during summer and eaten over the winter.

Sure I always helped her when I was around for these canning sessions, but this year I decided I wanted to really learn how to do this. I decided that I want to know exactly what's in my food and not have to try to decipher the chemistry lingo in most of the foods you buy at the store. So earlier this year she helped me and a friend can cherries, which are absolutely delicious, and I'm excited to enjoy all winter long when the other fresh fruits are dwindling down.

This last weekend she helped me can tomatoes. And I mean A LOT of tomatoes, 56lbs to be exact. But you can't beat fresh from the garden tomatoes. And one thing about fresh tomatoes, when you have them, you better either use them or store them because they go fast. And thus the canning fest commenced.

Here's what we did:

• Washed and heated canning jars (the dishwasher dry cycle works great at heating up the jars so they're ready for canning)
• Filled the steam canner with water and set it on med-low on the stove
• Put 7 lids in a pot of water, and heated them to boiling
• Peeled the tomatoes (Some people say to blanch them first, but if you have fresh garden ripe tomatoes you can get the skins off fairly easily without doing this. I do like to cut a small x at the top of the tomato though to get the pealing started, then I peal down in quarters.)
• Fill the jars (which have been heating nice & warm in the dishwasher) almost to the top, leaving a little space below the lowest ring. 
• Push the air out of the jar (you can use a special made canning tool for this, or carefully use a butter knife)
• Put 1 tsp of lemon juice in each jar (This adds acidity into the tomatoes. My grandma said her mother in law told her that you have to do this because too much of the acidity has been cultivated out of the tomatoes over the years. I prefer to use fresh squeezed lemon juice, just on the idea that fresh is better for you and if you squeezed it, you know 100% what's in it and how it was derived.)
• Carefully pull a lid out of the boiling water and place on the top of the jars (There's a special canning tool for this that has a magnet on one end. It's a real finger saver!)
• Securely tighten a heated ring over the lid (you can heat the rings in the dishwasher with your jars, or you can sit them around your steamer while you're filling the jars. 
• Place the lid over the steam canner and turn the heat to approximately medium. 
• Once you see steam coming out of the holes in the steamer canner, you can set a timer for 35 minutes. (You want a steady, but fairly light flow of steam coming from the canner. If it's too much or too little, adjust the temperature slightly, but avoid big shifts)
• Once the jars have steamed for 35 minutes, carefully remove them from the steamer (There another handy dandy canning tool for this. I highly recommend buying a general canning kit. They're inexpensive, and well worth the investment since you can use them for years)
• Sit the jars on a towel in a safe area where they can be left for a day or so. 
• Cover the jars with another towel to wrap in the heat
• As the lids seal, you'll head a "pop". (This is such a happy sound to me. It's a little "ding" one more successful jar!)
• After you've let the jars sit for a day or so check them all to make sure they've sealed. (If they've sealed there won't be any movement when you push the center top of the lid.)
• If any of your jars didn't seal, use them immediately. (They won't stay fresh long.)
• Take all your successful jars, and store them up somewhere handy for a winter full of great tomatoes!

 

The finished product!

I am so excited to use my fresh made tomatoes this winter. I made some attempts at more mashed up tomatoes to use in sauces and spaghetti's this year. The ones that I left more whole I plan to use to make tomato soups and salsa sauce to eat with eggs.