Canning Tomatoes

I’ve been waiting for what seems like an eternity for the tomatoes to ripen. My hope is always to get most of the canning done before the new school year begins. Tomatoes in Oregon are notorious for taking their own sweet time.

Well finally, it was time to pick tomatoes.

In my first haul of the season I was able to gather 18 pounds of deliciousness.

Canning is a lot of work but over the years I have developed my own system. Of course when you move to a different house that system needs to be tweeked. One of those tweeks is how I make my “ice-water bath”. Since I no longer have an automatic ice-cube maker I can’t just dump a full load of ice-cubes into my cooler. I resorted to my frozen half gallons of water. I use a cooler rather than a bowl because I am always dealing with a lot of produce be it tomatoes or peaches. It ends up saving me time because I don’t have to change out the water after adding a bunch of  warm tomatoes.

First I wash the fruit and then into a large pot of boiling water they go. Not too many at a time so I don’t lower the temperature of the water.

I wait 30 – 60 seconds before I pull them out and plunge them into the ice-bath. Not all of the fruit will split in the boiling water. Some wait until the ice-bath. And there will still be plenty that don’t split. I find they are still easy to peel just by poking my fingernail into the end. Don’t leave the fruit in the boiling water waiting for them to split. It just makes the fruit mushy.

The skin just peels off easily.

I collect a number of peeled tomatoes before I begin the next process

which is slicing and coring. I am canning tomatoes in quarters. I find that it is easiest to remove the core when the tomato is quartered.

Once I get a large amount done then I dump them into my waiting pot. I love these flexible cutting mats especially for things that are juicy and I want to keep the juice. I don’t add water to my tomatoes. I find that the tomatoes give off enough juice to suffice for the boiling and the canning that added water isn’t necessary.

Another handy thing to have is a compost bowl. Keeps the work station free of messes and clutter.

Once I get all 18 pounds of tomatoes into the large pot I warm them. As I do that I get my clean/hot jars ready. Because the tomatoes of today are not as acidic as in years past we need to add citric acid  to the jars. This can be in the form of bottled lemon juice or the granulated citric acid. I use the latter.

Once I get the jars all full and the lids and rings put on it is into the canner. I am choosing to pressure can my tomatoes. Why? If I use the water bath technique then each load of seven pints will take 40 minutes to can. Using the pressure canner it only takes ten minutes AND I can fit a double load of pints into the canner. Yes, we have the additional time of venting, coming up to pressure and then the pressure release time. Still it is faster for me. My venting time is 10 minutes, with a double load of jars it only took seven minutes to come up to pressure. Add to that the 10 minutes of pressure and then about 30 minutes of pressure release and you have a total of 57 minutes and I am done. Yes, you could have two water bath canners going at once (which I have done many times) but this just seemed easier on this day.

Here is my load of double stacked pints. I could have fit two more jars in but alas, I didn’t have enough tomatoes.

And here they are.

Canning is work but very rewarding. I first learned to can in September of 2011 when my dear friend Bryn and her sister Lisa taught me to can peaches and pear sauce. The next spring another dear friend, Kirsten, taught me to pressure can. I really do love it and it is so economical. It is comforting to see so much food stored up for my family. So if you have never canned and are interested it is really quite easy and I’m here for the help. But beware, it can change your life. It was just three years ago that I began canning and now we live on a 14 acre farm. Beware.

Here is my next project.

Have a great day. The boys and I are going to spend the day at Lincoln City.

Karen