Friday, August 31, 2007

Thursdays are becoming Tomato Thursday

I seem to be processing tomatoes every Thursday - not sure how I picked that day of the week - funny how that happens!

This week I made tomato sauce


I had so many tomatoes this week they filled up both my 12 quart and 8 quart stock pots! I cooked them a little to make them softer so they go through the food strainer easier.


After they went through the food strainer I had about 10 quarts of juice to cook down.


I like to make my sauce a little thicker than what you buy in the store - I reduced it by more than half.


The finished product. You do want to add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint before processing in a boiling water bath for 40 minutes. I like to make a variety of sizes based on the recipes that I know I will use it in. I will use most of it over the winter for Chicken Chili - so I used the 24 oz. jars for the majority of the sauce.

2 comments:

Connie said...

I nominate you for canning queen! What a bountiful harvest and such a lot of work you have done processing it!

Jim from Delta said...

I was canning tomatoes for the first time and read that you have to cool the jars down as slowly as possible. So I turn the jars upside down for 30min and then put them in a cool with about 2L of boiling water in the bottom to preheat the cooler. The jars took 3days to cool down.