Canning Tomatoes

Our friend Dave won a tomato plant earlier this summer. Funny thing is, he doesn't like tomatoes, so I volunteered to take any he might grow, since I didn't grow my own this year. Due to our unusually cool summer, most of the tomatoes in the area didn't redden up very well, so by the time our first frost appeared, Dave pulled about 2 dozen green tomatoes off his plant, packed them up in a brown paper bag for me and dropped them off. I rolled the bag down, put it in a dark corner of my pantry and forced them to ripen up over the last three weeks. Today, I pulled them out and minus 4-5 tomatoes that had spoiled, every other tomato turned red and was ready for action.

I'd never be able to use all those tomatoes right away and I've been dying to try my hand at canning. I've found a new show on the Cooking Channel (not Food Network, but its sister channel, the Cooking Channel) called French Cooking at Home with Laura Calder. It's a culinary delight! I've found sooooo many fabulous recipes to try, but recently she showed us how to can tomatoes with a very easy recipe and I've been longing to try it out. Today I had my chance.

Anne Willan's Home Canned Tomatoes
Recipe courtesy Laura Calder
Ingredients:
Tomatoes
Few sprigs fresh thyme (I used rosemary)
Bay leaves
1 or 2 onion slices
Water, as needed
Quart jars

1. Pack whole tomatoes into quart/litre jars with a few thyme sprigs, a couple of bay leaves, and an onion slice or two.
2. Close the lids and set the jars on a rack in a deep pan.
3. Add enough water to cover generously.
4. Weight down with a brick so they don't float.
5. Simmer for an hour and a half, until they lose their shape and collapse.
6. Let the jars cool in the water so that they form a tight seal.
7. When done, each jar will look only half full of tomatoes.

I filled the jars as full as they would allow and sure enough, once they cooked down, each jar only looked half full...half full of delicious goodness! I didn't have a brick, so I weighed my jars down with some stainless steel bowls. These tomatoes can be used in any recipe canned tomatoes would be used in and can make a lusciously smooth tomato soup. Can't wait to pull these out in a couple months when there's not a decent tomato around!!