Love in the Kitchen - making fast, healthy, homegrown meals you'll enjoy

Friday, September 10, 2010

Canning Tomatoes

All summer long, I have been waiting for my tomatoes to look like this:


(this is not from my plant unfortunately)

So that I could make some of this:


(this did in fact come from my kitchen if not completely from my garden)

Tomato sauce is the reason I planted the darned tomato plants in the first place.

The tomatoes have not been cooperating.

However, the nice people at the farmer's market are having great luck in growing them, so I guess that is a good second choice.  I recently found myself with just enough beautiful ripe tomatoes to make 3 quarts of sauce.  Normally I might not have gone to the effort of getting all the canning stuff together and going through the process for just 3 jars, but this was my first time canning anything except jelly and I wanted to test the process before getting full-on into it.

And it worked!  Easy too, and only a bit time-consuming.  Here's the recipe:



Seasoned Tomato Sauce
Makes about 5 half-pints.

10 pounds washed, peeled, cored and chopped tomatoes
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
3 tablespoons fresh basil
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon sugar


Add all ingredients to a saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Press mixture through a food mill and discard seeds. Return to sauce pan and cook over medium-high heat until thick, stirring frequently. Add lemon juice or citric acid to hot canning jars and pack with hot prepared tomato mixture leaving ½-inch head space. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim and screw threads and adjust lids and screw bands.


Process in a boiling water bath canner
Half-Pints 35 minutes
Pints 35 minutes
Quarts 40 minutes

I love this!  For a lot less than it costs me to buy sauce, I have my own, healthy tasty sauce on the shelf!  Now that I know how easy it is, I'll be on the lookout for sales on tomatoes!


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Zentmrs

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2 comments:

  1. Sounds delicious. I tried growing cherry tomatoes in a home made topsy turvy planter and I failed.....it produced ONE cherry tomato. ONE

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  2. The more I read about canning the more I want to try it myself. The sauce looks delicious! Thanks for linking up with Family Food Friday! :)

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