Ok, so I learned it's really better to do this whole process when you have a whole crap ton of tomatoes ready because approximately 7 lbs of tomatoes doesn't make all that much when you reduce it down and get all that liquid off.
What I also learned was that you have to have the top off the stock pot to get the liquid to cook off. Duh. It's like I don't want the Food Network Every. Single. Night. I mean, I'm watching it right now. Lesson learned and it didn't take me that long to correct. Furthermore I plan on purchasing a pressure canner and really take this up a notch. Anybody out there can? Any advice?
3 comments:
How do you feel about me bringing you the vegetables I've grown in my garden, you canning them, and then us sharing the end result? I just can't bring myself to make the jump into canning right now.
Yeah canning is a whole day project, and worth every sauce finger lickin' minute of your hard work. Definitely wait until you have a lot more tomatoes to make it worth all the set up and time. I think we had about 200 last year, but that made a ton, and made me question like 40 times why the bleep we were doing this with two kids 'helping'.
I just typed a bunch of stuff and found this link and deleted all of it, b/c it's almost exactly what we do. The only difference was we put the boiling water to peel into the sink to get more tomatoes at once.
http://www.pickyourown.org/canning_tomatoes.htm
We also use Mrs. Wages Spaghetti mix & freeze the sauce- SO GOOD!! And easy. you can freeze that in a large zip lock bag. (that same site has exactly how we make it)
We made salsa last year. one batch we used Ball mix & the other we used a homemade recipe from Kathleen Gettinger. Kathleen's is definitely better, but for some reason it didn't have the bite to it when we canned it and had it a while later. The ball mix we actually just ate one the other day (a year old) and it was still really good. Chris thought it was actually better that it had sat and let the spices soak in more. (same site had how we do it. it's like we typed it I swear).
Good luck! It's definitely worth it when you get busy and it makes your pasta and things taste so fresh & much better.
-Cathy
Thanks, that's all good to know!!
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