Canning tomatoes is surprisingly easy and well worth it if you can get fresh, inexpensive tomatoes.
My garden never supplies enough tomatoes for canning but a local Mennonite farm that we get our eggs from sure does. She sells plastic laundry baskets full (I guess they equal about a bushel) for only $3.50!! I bought two and processed about half of them today. The other half need another day or two to ripen and will become a batch of homemade salsa.
I have a large pot of boiling water and drop the tomatoes in for about 60 seconds. Then I plunge (I like that word) them into a ice water bath.
See how the skins are peeling? The skins just rub right off and I cut out the cores.
I clean the jars in the dishwasher and boil the lids in a small pot on the stove for about 10 minutes to sterilize them.
Then I start stuffing the peeled tomatoes into the jars. They supply their own juice. I fill to about 1/2" to the top.
The mess afterwards....
I have to buy a big canner, but a large pot on the stove works fine too!
The jars are lined up waiting to be processed. They need to be in a waterbath for about 45 minutes.
I use the handy jar grabber (hand me down from mom-in-law) to remove the jars and allow them to cool on racks.
It's worth the work and I think I'll have to go and get more tomatoes and can some more!!
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