Canning Tomatoes

We started out with a huge box of tomatoes from the farmer's market. I asked Ideal Farms to bring me a box and set it aside for me. The moment I walked up to them, they looked at me, recognized me, and told me they had my tomatoes.

I could barely drag the heavy box to my car!

At home, we sorted about 1/3 of the large, reddest tomatoes to become chunks and the other 2/3 of the tomatoes to become puree.

 

A few of the mason jars were recycled and had labels on them. I took a pot of hot water and soaked the labels off and used my "food-only" paint scraper to scrape off the wet labels. Then scrub the remaining glue off with a green scrubbie. 

 

 I put a pot of water on the stove to heat the tomatoes that need to be skinned.

 A bowl full of ice water next to the hot pot of water to cool the tomatoes when they come out of the hot bath.

 Dissection station: Skins go on the left, seeds and guts in the middle, finished cut tomatoes on the right.

 

 Boil the tomatoes for just 1 to 2 minutes, just until the skins start to pop and then take them out immediately. I didn't photograph putting them in or taking them out as I can't do that and hold the camera at the same time. Go figure!

  

 I chopped the tomatoes up one by one. Find the dimple in the top of the tomato but then cut perpendicular to it. This should expose the seeds on both sides. If you cut the tomato open on the dimple line, it will just slice it down the partition and you can't get the seeds out.

Then take the tomato and cut the center stalk out of both sides. The first batch I put them in the skin/compost pile but the second batch I used the knife to cut out the stem plus most of the seeds and then put that in the second bowl.

Then I took off the skin by peeling it back with the knife.

Finally, I cut the tomato up in small pieces (depending on the chunkiness you want later) and put it in the big bowl. The chunks will still drip a lot of water so I kept pouring that back into bowl #2 when there was a lot. Bowl #2 gets sent through the KitchenAid grinder later.

 

 Finished tomato chunks.

 Preparing the KitchenAid for the puree tomatoes. We need the food grinder plus the vegetable attachment.

KitchenAid on the counter ready to be dissected too.

 Unscrew the little black knob and take out the metal plate.

 Knob unscrewed and cap removed:

 KitchenAid put together with the veggie attachments. Sorry I didn't take photos during the process but I do have a video. Again, could not photograph and put it together at the same time. I also can't photograph and run the machine because I'm covered in sticky tomato bits!

 

Once I had the kitchenAid set up for puree, I took the remaining 2/3 tomatoes and cut them into long strips so I could feed them down the tube to get crunched. The strainer will take the seeds and skins and shove them out the end chute and the tomato puree will fall out the drip. You need 2 containers to catch the debris; one for the sauce and one for the skins and seeds.

Once that's done, we take the puree and boil it down on the stove. It starts out very watery so when it's a thicker consistency, we add the tomato chunks and boil until they come to a good bubbly simmer. Then it's ready for canning.

 

 Cook a pot of clean water on the stove for the lids and any tools you use. They should be boiled in  180 degree water for about 20 minutes.

I put the glass jars in the oven and set the temperature to 200 degrees. They bake in the oven to sterilize and then turn off the oven. They should cool a little bit before you take them out with the sterilized tongs.

Scoop the hot sauce carefully into the jars using the funnel that is specially designed to fit in the jar.

 

When the jar is almost full to the top (with about an inch to spare), you pull out the blue funnel. You can't let anything spill on the lid or it won't seal right.

We take out the lid sets and dump the water out.

 Then we put the lid on the jar, placing it carefully and screw the tops on the jars hand tight. When they cool, the rubber should suck onto the glass jar and the top of the metal lid will suck in. Sometimes they create a pop noise when they are sealed which is a good sign. Check all the seals in the morning to make sure all the lids sealed properly. Now they can be stored at room temperature for a year!