Summer’s Bounty: Hot Water Bath Canning Tomatoes

Summer’s Bounty: HOT WATER BATH CANNING TOMATOES

BY SARAH LEFRANÇOISCHRISTOPHER ANDREW & SARAH LEFRANÇOIS PHOTOS

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"The beauty of processing

tomatoes is that it can be as easy or as complex

as you want it to be."

Pick, pack, chop, bubble, boil, process. This is the rhythm that overtakes my kitchen from when the first batch of tomatoes turn red in August, to when the very last are delicately taken off of vine at the end of September. During this time, there is not a span of more than a few days that passes without a pot of sauce on the stove.

The beauty of processing tomatoes is that it can be as easy or as complex as you want it to be. It can take a day, or an entire season. Personally, I like to start my seedlings in the early spring - a mix of Roma and San Marzano tomatoes, both of the paste variety - because I enjoy the process of going from seed to sauce. I like having my hand in every aspect of the creation of the final product. We nurture the seedlings throughout the summer, and once the warmer days of August hit and the fruit turns red, our evenings are spent as a family filling our harvest baskets with tomatoes and hauling them inside. No matter how the tomato looks - bumped, bruised, or split - it gets thrown into the pot.

Once we have enough to get a pot of sauce going, the process I follow is simple: I rinse the tomatoes, quarter them, cut away the bad spots, and put them in a pot to gently simmer until they break down. While the sauce is bubbling away, I take a large stock pot and fill it with enough water to cover an inch over the rim of my tallest jars (I use either pint or quart sized jars) and bring that water to a boil. l often put the jars in the water as it’s starting to boil so that they become sterilized, though it’s not a necessary process if your jars are clean. As the tomatoes break down,

I pop in my immersion blender to break up the pulp, seeds and skins. (Note: some choose to remove the seeds and skins before, but I leave them in). Once the sauce is boiled down to the thickness that I like, I pull the jars out of the hot water, and begin to fill them with the sauce base, leaving an inch of headspace at the top.

While I prefer not to add anything to my sauce so that it can be used as a blank slate for whatever I’m making throughout the year, it is necessary to

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add citric acid for safe shelf storage: ¼ tsp for pint-sized jars, and ½ tsp for quart jars. It is important in processing tomatoes that you stick with tried and true recipes, usually found on websites such as Ball Canning, Better Homes and Gardens, Local Extension Centers, and my favorite: foodinjars.com. You cannot just hot water bath can a pre-made jar of your family’s sauce recipe. Items that usually go into saucefat, onions, garlic- will often change the pH level of the tomatoes and render them unstable for shelf storage, which means they become an environment susceptible to growing botulism spores. This type of sauce - sauce with “addons” - is a better candidate for pressure canning.

Once the jars are filled with an inch of headspace, I wipe around the rim of the jar to clean it and tighten down the lid and ring. This then goes into the big pot of boiling water for 45 minutes. After 45 minutes of processing, each jar is carefully taken out with a jar lifter, placed on a folded kitchen towel, and left to cool. Once cool, I remove the rings (it’s important to store your jars with the rings off so that they don’t rust into place, and if you have a faulty seal it becomes evident) and test the lids. You’ll hear the satisfying “ping” of a lid that’s creating a good seal, and 24 hours later, if the lids don’t come loose, the jars are ready to be stored! This year, we put in about 40 tomato plants, and I was able to put up 50 quarts and 13 pints of tomato sauce to store and use throughout the year.

I also like to roast and freeze my tomatoes - especially the heirloom varieties - and use them in pasta and on pizza. I’ll roast them in my oven, and then freeze them on cookie sheets over parchment paper before vacuum sealing them in packs to have a taste of summer throughout the year.

Alternatively, while I have a constant pot of sauce on the stove throughout

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"No matter how the tomato looks - bumped, bruised,

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the tomato harvest season, those who can’t or choose not to grow tomatoes can still process in mass quantities by purchasing a bushel or two of tomatoes from a local farm.

For example, my cousin Jeffrey, who lives in New York City, joins a friend’s family in Queens each year to make his sauce in a single day. His words say it best:

“We work in large scale: bushels at a time are dumped into clean 50-gallon garbage cans with the garden hose filling them with water, a constant bath to wash off the plump red rubies. Two bushels are washed at a time.

This year, we did 12 bushels in a day. The tomatoes are quartered, put in a pot, and moved over a big propane burner.

Over a medium flame, the tomatoes are watched and stirred with giant wooden spoons or oars. After a long while of breaking down the flesh and starting to simmer off that water,

large saucepans are used to send the stewed tomatoes through the food mill.

You do this twice -- the first time it’s super juicy. The second, you take the pulp, seeds, and that first round of extracts and run that through again. This step really brings out the paste, and extracts as much flavor as possible.

All the while, my friend’s family is communicating in Italian, we’re sipping wine, and everyone is rotating positions. There’s a constant flow of antipasto plates of food (though the morning starts

or split - it gets thrown into the pot."”

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in New York fashion with bagels and cream cheese).

Once the mill makes the sauce, that goes back on the burner to reduce down. Jars are placed on the tables, and a few of us plunge big saucepans into the vat of plain red tomato sauce and fill the jars. It’s hot liquid, there’s laughing and yelling from the splashes burning up, but that’s part of the fun. It wouldn’t be a day of sauce making if you didn’t have the burns to prove you spent the day making food for the seasons ahead…a labor of sweat, smiles, and love.

Then someone starts putting the lids on (with the requisite tight seal) An hour later, they’re tightened again. All the tables are filled with jars, and we use laundry baskets lined with blankets, too. They’re covered with what seems like hundreds of blankets so they cool slowly.

The day ends with a huge dinner of pasta, steaks, eggplant, lots of wine, and too much dessert. The smiles never stop. After dinner, I catch the Long Island Railroad back to Manhattan to crash in bed, eager to wait a week to pick up my jars once they’ve comfortably cooled. My friend’s mom doesn’t let anyone take their jars that day for fear they’ll break or not cool properly. A defender of tradition, and I’m fine with that.

A week later, I head back out to Flushing to pick up my 60 jars of sauce, and I’m stocked for the year - until it runs out or I give it away.”

Whether you raise tomatoes from seed to sauce, start with store-bought seedlings, or buy tomatoes by the bushel, the tradition of coming together to make sauce for personal use or to share with family and friends is incredibly rewarding, and easier than most realize.

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"stick with tried and true recipes"

210CT FOOD & FARM / SUMMER 2019

SIMPLE HOT WATER BATH TOMATOES

FOR SHELF STORAGE

YOU WILL NEED:

• 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 pounds of ripe tomatoes (about 8 to 11 medium) per quart

• Water

• Citric acid or bottled lemon juice

• Salt (optional)

• Quart or pint glass jars and lids

DIRECTIONS

1. PREPARE boiling water canner. Heat jars in simmering water until ready for use. Do not boil. Wash lids in warm soapy water and set bands aside. WASH tomatoes. Dip in boiling water 30 to 60 seconds. Immediately dip in cold water. Slip off skins. Trim away any green areas and cut out core. Leave tomatoes whole or cut into halves or quarters.

2. ADD ½ tsp citric acid or 2 tbsp bottled lemon juice to each hot quart jar; ADD ¼ tsp citric acid or 1 tbsp bottled lemon juice to each hot pint jar.

3. PACK tomatoes in hot jars, pressing down, until space between tomatoes fills with juice, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.

4. ADD 1 teaspoon salt to each quart jar, 1/2 teaspoon to each pint jar, if desired.

5. REMOVE air bubbles. Wipe rim. Center hot lid on jar. Apply band and adjust until fit is fingertip tight.

6. PROCESS filled jars in a boiling water canner 1 hour and 25 minutes for pints and quarts, adjusting for altitude. Remove jars and cool. Check lids for seal after 24 hours. Lid should not flex up and down when center is pressed.

ROASTED TOMATOES FOR FREEZING

INGREDIENTS

• Olive oil for greasing pan plus additional for drizzling (optional)

• Tomatoes, cut into slices ½ inch thick

• 3/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

• 1 tsp sugar

PREPARATION

1. Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Oil a shallow baking pan.

2. Arrange tomatoes, cut sides up, in a single layer in pan. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and sugar.

3. Roast tomatoes until skins are wrinkled and beginning to brown on bottom, about 1 hour.

4. After tomatoes cool, carefully lift on to a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper, and place in the freezer.

5. Frozen tomatoes can then be taken and vac sealed or stored in a freezer bag with most of the air squished out.

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