Thursday, November 4, 2010

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!!

4 comments:

  1. Thinking about doing this method....did they can ok? I'm worried, because there is no liquid, that they may spoil.

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  2. Joanna, they canned beautifully. I've done this process several times since posting this, and I've never had a problem with spoilage. Even though you're not adding any liquid when canning, the tomatoes generate some liquid while they're being boiled in the jars. See the final picture above...that's what the tomatoes look like when they come out of the water bath. I've kept these jars for up to a year after canning them, and when I opened them, they smelled fresh and delicious, there was no mold or any other kind of growing bacteria. I highly, highly recommend this process. It's easy and effective. Good canning to you!

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  3. I canned small tomoatoes in smaller jars using the same method....guess what!!! I never got to see how they did. Everyone who came to visit me noticed the jars of tomatoes and I gave them one to take home....must have worked...heehee
    Sheila

    ReplyDelete
  4. I canned small tomoatoes in smaller jars using the same method....guess what!!! I never got to see how they did. Everyone who came to visit me noticed the jars of tomatoes and I gave them one to take home....must have worked...heehee
    Sheila

    ReplyDelete