Stewed Tomatoes

Another canning adventure begins and we have high hopes for putting up as much food as we can during the season.

Although we started canning almost 3 weeks ago we are going to start here and periodically work backwards to show you the food we’ve already preserved.  Today’s adventure started late and will end later but “Stewed Tomatoes” are one of my favorites.  Just the ingredients alone remind me of picking in the fields of the Holland Marsh with my mom and siblings many years ago.

To start we blanch all of our tomatoes.  Working in large batches of 1 bushel at a time we blanch, peel and core all of the tomatoes.

Sometimes we are lucky enough to have a little help.  We consider these two our apprentices…they are both quick studies!

After all of the tomatoes have been prepared we move on to all of our other ingredients which include chopped celery, onion, and zucchini.  You can substitute green pepper for the zucchini. 

Then onto the stove to brew for 10 minutes before being placed in hot sterilized 1 litre jars.

The finished product is so tasty on pasta with a little cheese or it can be enjoyed as a side dish.  Either way the freshness of summer has been captured in a jar!

OUR RECIPE  for STEWED TOMATOES:

• One Batch will equal approximately 4 x 1 litre jars
• 16 Cups of Roma Tomatoes – blanched, peeled, and cored.  Cut into 1.5″ squares or to desired size
• 2 cups zucchini – quartered and sliced
• 1.5 cups celery – diced
• 1 cup onions – diced
• 2 tsps kosher salt – you can also use pickling salt but we think the kosher salt has a better favor…you be the judge
• Mix ingredients together and cook for 10 minutes or until vegetables start to soften
• Sterlize jars and add 1 tbsp bottled lemon juice for every 500mL jar and 2 tbsp lemon juice per 1 L jar
• Process in a PRESSURE CANNER following the directions.

Helpful hints:

• When blanching tomatoes score the end so that they do not have to spend as much time in the boiling water and make sure to place them in an ice water bath to cool quickly.
• The recommended headspace for pressure canning tomatoes is 1″ but we reduced this to 1/2″ because it was leaving so much unused space in each jar.

There are so many great blogs out there by other canning junkies and for me many of them have been super helpful.  As we go along I am sure we will get better at explaining the process and sharing our successes and failures with you.  For now, I hope you will enjoy our pictures and share in the fun we have making all kinds of tasty treats.

Put Up Total:

• 17 x 500mL (8 Wide Mouth Jars and 9 Regular Mouth Jars)
• 17 x 1 L