The last two years, DH planted probably two dozen tomato plants, and they all yielded extremely well. We had a tomato jungle. We only had a few of the smaller varieties, and I don't think we canned those.
Canning tomatoes is a little overwhelming to me, just working with the pressure cooker and the boiling water. DH did most of it, but I also took care of some canner loads, and nothing went wrong.
The thing with a large crop of tomatoes is that they keep ripening, incessantly, and you have to deal with them NOW. Here's how we took care of processing them, until we had a free day here or there to actually focus on thawing and canning them:
Load the tomatoes into a sink of water. Rinse them, get the bugs off, and cut out the stems and any bad parts.
Drop batches of tomatoes into a pot of boiling water just until the skin cracks.
Use a slotted spoon to bring the tomatoes back out of the pot, and put them in a sink of cool water.
When the tomatoes are cool enough to work with (doesn't take long), peel the skins off.
Put the peeled tomatoes into gallon freezer ziplocs and freeze until you're ready to can them.
You'll need to peel the tomatoes anyway before you can them, so this isn't really any extra work.
We also had a large crop of okra, plus some jalapenos and green peppers. We ended up processing a lot of our tomatoes into a tomato-okra salsa that is very good - but hot.
I don't remember the recipe or instructions for canning tomatoes, but the pressure canner will have instructions. PM me if you want me to look it up in our canning book. I use our canned tomatoes a lot for italian sauces, but the canned salsa gets eaten pretty quickly, too.
Canning tomatoes is a little overwhelming to me, just working with the pressure cooker and the boiling water. DH did most of it, but I also took care of some canner loads, and nothing went wrong.
The thing with a large crop of tomatoes is that they keep ripening, incessantly, and you have to deal with them NOW. Here's how we took care of processing them, until we had a free day here or there to actually focus on thawing and canning them:
Load the tomatoes into a sink of water. Rinse them, get the bugs off, and cut out the stems and any bad parts.
Drop batches of tomatoes into a pot of boiling water just until the skin cracks.
Use a slotted spoon to bring the tomatoes back out of the pot, and put them in a sink of cool water.
When the tomatoes are cool enough to work with (doesn't take long), peel the skins off.
Put the peeled tomatoes into gallon freezer ziplocs and freeze until you're ready to can them.
You'll need to peel the tomatoes anyway before you can them, so this isn't really any extra work.
We also had a large crop of okra, plus some jalapenos and green peppers. We ended up processing a lot of our tomatoes into a tomato-okra salsa that is very good - but hot.
I don't remember the recipe or instructions for canning tomatoes, but the pressure canner will have instructions. PM me if you want me to look it up in our canning book. I use our canned tomatoes a lot for italian sauces, but the canned salsa gets eaten pretty quickly, too.
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