WHAT ARE YOU CANNING TODAY?

[Mini Horses]

That pulpy ketchup will work great for meatloaf and on a burger, ya won't even know it's lumpy!

Good call on juice!! It's why some things are canned, to have when market doesn't. It's pretty, too.

I've never made ketchup but may when I have too many tomatoes next time. Since I don't use a lot, I buy.

You've got nice neighbors!

 

[flowerbug]

picked tomatoes a little bit ago so we'll be canning those tonight.

 

[flowerbug]

finished washing up the pans a few minutes ago, still need some processing time on the half gallon jars. 28 quarts and a pint (which isn't being sealed). the oven holds that much, i'm trying to remember in the past if i've ever done a larger batch, but i don't know for sure if any more would fit. tomorrow morning i'll see if any more jars will fit because it would be nice to know for next year if i ever get in a similar spot.

i think this makes it enough tomatoes put up for the year, there's still a few buckets out there of smaller tomatoes that we'll pick and eat from but otherwise i'm ready to call it good enough.

amazingly with all the dry weather we've had the past few weeks and the wide sprawling way the tomato plants have grown this year all of the plants still have some leaves on them. normally by the time we get to this point in the process disease takes the leaves out almost completely. the plants are flowering and putting on new fruits. i'll leave them alone and let the bees have some food.

 

[Mini Horses]

the oven holds that

I've heard of oven canning, never tried. What's the prep method and how do you store after? Success/failure? Only your tomatoes?

 

[flowerbug]

I've heard of oven canning, never tried. What's the prep method and how do you store after? Success/failure? Only your tomatoes?

you need a reliable oven (that regulates the heat pretty well), you may need to use an oven thermometer at first. you don't want the temperature to swing too widely. ours is pretty good and doesn't vary much at all.

we only do acidic items now but years ago Mom did all of our canning this way. a lot of time for the non-acidic items. it's not a recommended way of doing things, but for acidic items i'm quite ok with it.

rinse off tomatoes and dunk in boiling water to get the skins to release (30 seconds works for the variety we grow, might be different for others) and then i drop them into cold water so they can cool before they get stacked on a towel to absorb the extra drips of water. core and peel off skins and chunk and put into pots to warm up. warm up to hot, warm up jars a little.

hot pack the jars leaving head space, wipe down the rims, put the lids on and tighten (all this as you would for BWB canning IMO). put in oven for a period of time at about 250F to get some of the air to expand and come out so that when they cool off they're sealed.

how long to put things in for depends upon how hot the contents. i usually go between a half hour and 45 minutes for quarts, but if i'm doing an entire oven rack full i'll add extra time. those half gallon jars i did last night i turned the oven off after and hour and a half and then left them in there the rest of the night. they were still too hot to the touch this morning so i had to use pads to move them. this pretty much probably destroys a lot of the vitamin C content of them as they shouldn't be left that long, but we primarily are using them for the flavor anyways and eat other things more fresh and full of vitamin C.

seal failure rate for me is about 1 jar in a thousand. i don't keep exact counts any longer as i can't even remember the last time a seal didn't hold. i always inspect jars for cracks and chips before using and make sure they are clean. spoiling failures are also pretty rare but they do happen sometimes if a bit of whatever gets put in the jar. some years we've had tomatoes that did not form properly and they were a mess to process (we called them brains as that is what they looked like). gladly this year not many tomatoes at all had strange shapes and that really helps during coring and peeling to not have to spend a lot of time looking for bits of inclusions in the tomatoes.

and yes, only tomatoes we grow. it's been many years now. we like Big Beef variety, they're pretty firm right up until they get ripe so they can sit on the ground and not spoil too easily (some will, but not many). with it being very dry this harvest season i don't think we lost too much. we're looking at over 30+ lbs per plant harvested used weight in jars (3 lbs/ quart is about how it normally turns out) counting that we've also given away a lot of tomatoes and have a few buckets left out there of smaller tomatoes so they've been a productive and reliable tomato - i'd say this season we're above 40 lbs per plant. last year we topped 60 lbs per plant (much different garden).

 

[Mini Horses]

Thanks. These then just sit on shelves until used, right?

Does the product inside look/behave as most types canned, as to water,shrinkage, etc?

 

[flowerbug]

Thanks. These then just sit on shelves until used, right?

Does the product inside look/behave as most types canned, as to water,shrinkage, etc?

the jars are stored in the front closet as we don't really have a pantry or cellar space. in one to two years they are used up.

it's chunks and plenty of juice (we like juicy tomatoes not the kinds that don't have as much). our main use is in making other dishes so we adjust the water content of what we're making to suit whatever the dish might be. for things where we want a thicker sauce we may add some store bought tomato paste.

i really don't think it is worth cooking down tomatoes to thicken things up for the price of energy plus the time involved. if i were concerned about how thick things were i'd grow other varieties... we've tried that in the past and didn't like the lack of flavor in those more pasty tomatoes (most of the umami flavor we're after comes from the gel around the seeds IMO).

 

[flowerbug]

oops, i forgot to check how many half gallon jars the oven could hold.

 

[FarmerJamie]

Not that I need more jars, but found two cases of wide mouth quarts

 

[Mini Horses]

Just took 7 half pints of plum/elderberry "jam" from WB. Really ripe plums had to "be" something. Once processed to pulp, a cup short of needs...I added a cup of previously canned elderberry juice! Similar taste -- so, done deal taste

With jelly, jam & preserves I've made it looks like I'll need to eat a lot of PB&J. Well, it's good for a few years!! No problem.