Canning Tomatoes

Over the weekend we went to the farm stand at the flea market in town and got a big bag of plum tomatoes to can (ours are almost ripe, but won’t be anywhere near enough.) Cooked down, they yielded 5 1/2 quarts. Today, Christine and Milo picked all of our ripe many-colored cherry tomatoes- they magically just filled our 6 quart stockpot- and I cooked and strained them into 4 quart jars. Not enough to get us through the winter, but a start. If I can find a wholesale source for organic plum tomatoes I will do it again and fill the big pot as high as it will go. The pantry is starting to look respectable.

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4 Comments

  1. cookiecrumb
    September 9, 2007

    You got four quarts from six? Amazing. I guess I tend to cook my tomatoes down considerably more.
    I’m proud of you, little dude. Spoken as a canning-phobe.

  2. peter barrett
    September 9, 2007

    These guys are pretty watery, and I figure they’ll have more uses on the other end if I leave them that way (e.g. soup instead of sauce.) I added a little lemon juice or cider vinegar to stave off the botulism, and boiled the jars for 45 minutes. Here’s hoping it works.

  3. cookiecrumb
    September 10, 2007

    I wouldn’t have even thought it would take 45 minutes! Adding the acid, I can understand. Guess I’d better haul out my ancient copy of that old standard, Putting Food By.
    Fingers crossed for you. 🙂

  4. peter barrett
    September 10, 2007

    The guidelines I was using said 45, so I figured better safe than sorry. If you see a post titled “Summer in Winter” sometime in February and then hear nothing more from me, you can assume that your fears were justified.

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