If you’re from around here, (Oregon) it’s probably a bit iffy that you have a bunch of tomatoes, ripe and ready from your garden, shouting at you to do something with.  We haven’t had much of a Summer here.  I know for myself, my tomato vines are bursting with tomatoes…green tomatoes.

But if you are in Oregon and you got lucky this year with your tomatoes, or you’re not from around here, here is a post for you!  Over the last weekend, and then again on Tuesday, my family came over for both whole days and we canned a TON of food.  Applesauce, peaches and tomatoes (and I did some pickles on my own).

Like I mentioned, my tomatoes haven’t ripened yet, but I really wanted to can tomatoes this year- so we bought some.  The main reason I wanted to do my own tomatoes was because I’ve been hearing more and more things about BPA being in canned foods and especially in tomatoes since they’re especially acidic.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can check HERE for an interesting article I found on it…it’s a pretty middle of the line article, which I like, since I try and be middle of the line on most things, but she does conclude that it might be better to be safe than sorry, especially if you have children under the age of 6 in your house….which I do.

I was hoping to make another how-to video on canning tomatoes, but it didn’t work out.  Hopefully the step-by-step process will be easy to follow along in photos.

So- let’s get started!

Here is what you'll need to get started: Tomatoes of course, jars, lids and rings, lemon juice, a large pot of boiling water for blanching, salt (optional), garlic (optional), herbs (optional). I use a lot of Italian-style tomatoes, so I pretty much stripped all my herbs out of the garden (oregano, parsley, thyme, and basil), chopped them up in the food processor and added them to my jars.

Other supplies you will need, are a boiling water canner, a rack and jar tongs.

Here's a great idea that I learned from my canning book. If you don't have a boiling water canner, you can use any large stock pot that you might have in your kitchen. You just have to make sure that it's tall enough to put your jars in and have the water cover the top. And then what you can do is take some jar rings and tie them together like this to use as a rack. The purpose of the rack is to keep your jars off the heat and to have the boiling water touching it on all sides. This works perfectly!

Well...we were busy that day, and I missed the first half of the blanching process. What you want to do is have a pot of boiling water going and then drop the tomatoes into the water for 30-60 seconds. I have found that it works better if you prick the skin with a knife prior to putting them in the water. After the skin splits, remove them and put them in an ice water bath.

After the tomatoes are dunked in the ice water, you may then pull the skin right off really easily. And then you're left with strange feeling, slimy, peeled tomatoes which you can then cut into whatever you want...we diced ours, but you could cut them in wedges, or halves....however you want them.

Prepare all of your jars. The only thing that is really required is the lemon juice...1 TB for a pint jar, and 2 TB for a quart jar. But you can also add salt (which we did) and flavor them however you want. I added garlic and garden herbs to most of mine until I ran out, and then I just did plain.

Then you want to fill your jars with the tomatoes. Fill them up to the bottom rim of the jar. Shake them down as you go to loosely pack them and press them gently at the top.

At this point, you can do one of two things...either pour in extra tomato juice from your chopping, or pour in boiling water. We did the water because it was faster. Pour water or juice in up to the bottom rim of the jars.

Then you want to get a non-metallic spoon or spatula and slide it down between the jar and the tomatoes 3-4 times around the jar to remove any air bubbles. Add more juice or water if needed.

So…at this point, that was the last photo I took of the process.  We got busy and I forgot!  So here’s what happens after you fill the jars:

Wipe down the rims.

Top them with the flat lids and screw on the rings.

Put them in the boiling water canner- a little tip…we had a few jars explode on us, and we’re pretty sure that it was the temp difference, even though we were using the hot water in the tomatoes.  So a good thing to do would be to hang your rack on the edges of the canner so that it’s up out of the water and then set your jars in there, put the lid back on, and steam them for 5 minutes or so before dropping them down into the water.  This heats up the glass jars a little slower and when we did this, we didn’t have a problem with anything breaking.

Return the water to a rolling boil.  From that point start processing the tomatoes. 40 minutes for pint jars and 45 minutes for quart jars.

Once the time is up, use your jar tongs to remove the jars and let them cool.

Your jars should seal fairly quickly and you will hear a popping sound.  If after 24 hours, they haven’t sealed, you can either re-process them, or put them in the fridge to use fairly quickly.

After 24 hours you can wash them off if you want (I found that I had a lot of residue/sticky-ness on the outside of my jars this year, especially the peaches and applesauce, so I gave them all a bath in warm water before putting them away…no sense in attracting ants.  You can even remove the rings if you’d like.  And then put them away, for later use in soups, salsa, sauces or whatever, later in the season!  Maybe you’ll even get a cupboard that looks like this:

All my pickles and tomatoes!


Kristi

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