I Think I Can

Messy kitchen ready for canning

We have an abundance of beautiful, ripe, red tomatoes growing in our garden. This year we planted 14 plants with the intention that I would can their produce. A little over a week ago I picked a basket of plum tomatoes and they've been ripening on our counter ever since. Today I decided they were ready to be canned.

I kept it simple and canned these beauties as "crushed tomatoes"...with delicious fresh basil. When I want to make sauce I will strain them through a sieve and thicken them by cooking them and adding tomato paste.

Here are the tomatoes being blanched (back pot). Blanching is simply putting the whole tomatoes into a pot of boiling water for 30 - 60 seconds, and then putting them in a bowl of very cold water. This helps loosen the skins. Once the skins are loose I cut off the top nub on the tomato, peel away the skin and place them in a sauce pot on medium (front pot). I use a potato masher to crush the tomatoes in the pot.

Tomatoes blanching and crushed tomatoes simmering

When about half of the tomatoes are simmering in the pot I add a generous amount of fresh basil...we grow this basil in our herb garden.

Fresh basil drying

Fresh basil added to simmering crush tomatoes

Once all the tomatoes are added to the sauce pot I let them cook just enough for the mixture to resemble the appearance of stewed tomatoes.

cooking....cooking....cooking

Tomatoes simmering away

While these cook, I fill my canner pot with water and bring it to a boil....actually I have that water heated up way in advance but I turn it up at this point. The water (because there is so much of it) takes a good 15 minutes to reach boiling temp. While the water is between hot and boiling temperatures I place the empty jars in the water to sterilize. The lids (not the screw tops, they don't need to be sterilized) go into a smaller sauce pot of hot..but not boiling water. If these are boiled you run the risk of damaging the rubber seal.

Hot jar ready for tomatoes

Once the jars have been in the almost boiling water for 2-4 minutes I remove them (with the proper tongs). Using a canning funnel and a ladle, I fill each jar...leaving about an inch of headspace between the rim and the tomatoes. Once the jars are filled I wipe the rims with a damp paper towel in order to remove any tomato particles. Then, I place a lid on each and then a screw ring. I always make sure the screw ring is tightened so it holds the lid in place but not so tight that the ring warps.

These tomato filled jars get placed into the now boiling water that is in the canner. These jars are boiled for 35 minutes. After 35 minutes, I remove the canner lid and let the jars sit in the water for 5 minutes. Then, using the proper tongs, I carefully remove each jar. Do not tilt the jars to remove the water that is sitting on the top. It will evaporate as they cool.

Here they are!!!

The finished product: canned crushed tomatoes!

In 24 hours I will check to make sure the lids are concave...which means the jars are sealed. My dad has been making these for years...he learned from his dad...and they never heat processed their jars. But, I do it anyway. (oh, heat processing is the boiling-of-the-tomato-filled-jars). I like to use the canned tomatoes within one year, but my dad has used ones older than that and they have been fine.

Just in case anyone is interested in doing this...or any other canning recipe/process, I highly recommend the book: Complete Book of Home Preserving (made possible by the Ball company..who also sells everything you need to can....and then some).