Ack! What to do with all of these tomatoes?

[Rikki Jean]

I purposely planted a ton of tomato plants because I wanted to do lots of canning this year. I want to can pasta sauce, whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, etc. One important factor that I forgot about though...DH's aunt and uncle are out of town until the middle of September, and they're the ones with the pressure canner!

So, now I don't know what to do...can I freeze them, and then can later? I don't want to mess with the good flavors, ya know?

[MissMommyNiceNice]

I have lots of recipes for boiling water canner tomatoes, sauce, salsa, etc. Can't you just do them that way? If not, you can freeze some things, chop tomatoes, sauce, stew tomatoes. I haven't had good luck with salsa personally. Isn't there someone who has a key & is in regular communication with them? Surely there has to be a way to get in to borrow it. I'd consider this a canning emergency!

[Rikki Jean]

Originally Posted by MissMommyNiceNice

I have lots of recipes for boiling water canner tomatoes, sauce, salsa, etc. Can't you just do them that way? If not, you can freeze some things, chop tomatoes, sauce, stew tomatoes. I haven't had good luck with salsa personally. Isn't there someone who has a key & is in regular communication with them? Surely there has to be a way to get in to borrow it. I'd consider this a canning emergency!

I forgot to mention that they have the canner with them. They've been road-tripping, and one of their last stops is Oregon, where they always can tuna.

I've never canned anything before, so I don't know anything about boiling them in water...tell me more.

[MissMommyNiceNice]

As long as you have the basics of pressure canning down, you should be able to water bath can too! Just pick up a copy of the ball blue book and follow the directions. All the supplies are the same, the only thing you'll need is a big flatbottomed pot with straight sides and a rack for the bottom (I use a round cookie rack). I have a specific canner (it's enamel coated, some people call it a turkey or crab pot) but in the beginning I was using just the big pot that comes with the regular set. It works if you're only using 1/2 pints. Otherwise you'll need something deeper.

The basic premise is the same, sterilize jars, ladel hot contents into hot jars, remove air bubbles, wipe rims, adjust lids, process for the allotted time. You can't do things like soup or veggies that aren't pickled or w/ added lemon juice, but I do everything in there! As long as it has enough acid to prevent spoilage, everything will be fine. It's how people have been preserving things since before the invention of pressure canners!

See this site:
http://www.freshpreserving.com/

Also, take a look at some of the stickies at the top or the canning thread.

[notwonamesalike]

You can just toss the tomatoes in the freezer whole and use them later for sauce. Just run them through a food mill.

[sidandspencersmom]

no advice, just wishing i had that problem. Good luck!

[Owen'nZoe]

If you have a large stock pot, you should be able to use it as a boiling water canner. Mine is a pretty standard 8 qt stock pot, and I can can 4 pints (or 7 half pints) at a time. I line the bottom with canning jar rings in lieu of a rack.

[cornflake girl]

Um...since I'm just up the street, you could give them to me!

eta: I didn't know you were pregnant! Congrats!

[HydeParkB]

I can tomatoes in a water bath. My instructions say to add lemon juice.

So I think you should be fine without the pressure canner.

I, too, am drowning in tomatoes. My mom and daughter LOVE dehydrated tomatoes, so I am making some of those tonight. I think canned pizza sauce is next on my list.

[tankgirl73]

Here:

http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publication...n_guide_03.pdf

That's everything you need to know about canning tomatoes. It includes timings etc for both boiling waterbath and pressure canning, for a variety of styles and products (ie, tomato juice, whole tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, salsa, etc). When using a waterbath, you have to add either lemon juice or citric acid powder to the jars to guarantee high enough acidity.

If you've never done a waterbath, you should read basic instructions first, there's lots of guides online. Basically you need a pot that's tall enough, a rack to keep the bottles off the bottom of the pot, bottles and the special lids. It's also helpful to have some tools like jar lifters, maybe you've got some of that stuff already (I've never done pressure canning so I don't know how much overlap there is lol)

I do lots of tomatoes every year, both whole/crushed in their own juice, and salsa. On occasion I've had a jar fail to seal after processing, but that's the worst problem I've had (and we just eat those ones right away heh).

I can't WAIT to be drowning in tomatoes. It's my first year growing my own, and I nearly killed my plants when setting them out... they're doing great now but they're several weeks "behind" due to the time lost in their recuperation... Plus the summer has been crazy wet and cool. I'm getting lots and lots of tomatoes starting now, but it will be quite some time before they're ready to harvest *sigh*

[FuzzyOne]

i second the PP who mentioned freezing them - we do that every year with all the extras from our CSA (we get TONS). i put the whole tomatoes on a cookie sheet and stick them in the freezer. once they are frozen, i just put them in freezer bags - they work GREAT for sauces and soups and it's so easy.

[littleplum]

Can't you just buy your own? That way you don't have to rely on borrowing one that's not available when you need it.

[Rikki Jean]

Thank you for the replies everyone! I posted about this in a local playgroup, and someone there offered to let me use her pressure canner and help me with the canning. Yippee! I'm definitely going to look into the water bath stuff anyway.

As far as freezing and using the tomatoes whole goes, IME, the seeds make pasta sauce bitter, so I think that I would still blanche and seed them before I froze them, if I went that route.

Originally Posted by cornflake girl

Um...since I'm just up the street, you could give them to me!

eta: I didn't know you were pregnant! Congrats!

I'll let you know if I have anything else that I need taken off of my hands! We're going through spurts of having LOTS of squash and zucchini, and we usually have TONS of tomatillos (but I gave a bunch of them away at LLL last night).

No one from APIE knows that I'm pg...I've kind of fallen off the face of the earth for a while...I need to get back on. Yahoo actually deleted me from ALL of my groups for some dumb reason, so I have to re-join the group. Thanks for the congrats.

Originally Posted by littleplum

Can't you just buy your own? That way you don't have to rely on borrowing one that's not available when you need it.

I would love to! Who wants to start up a collection fund? Seriously, I want my own, but I just can't buy one right now. I wish I could!

[cschick]

I don't even can tomatoes/sauce, I just freeze.

I have the ball jam jars, and I make up the sauce, and freeze it in those. I've always thought that home-frozen tastes better than home-canned . . . yeah, you want to use them in the next 3-4 months if you have a standard freezer, the next 6 months if you have a deep freeze, but I've never had frozen foods remain more than 2-3 months into the winter anyhow.