If you’re a regular reader of this blog you probably know that I’ve been having a little tomato canning trouble. Last weekend we decided to give it another go with another 20 pounds of tomatoes.
I wanted to see if hot packing would make any difference, so we peeled and seeded about half of the tomatoes, and then ran the other half through the tomato mill to make a pureé. Then we simmered it all together to make a chunky sauce. We ladled it in to quart jars, loaded the jars into the pressure canner, and hoped for the best.
I think the scariest part of pressure canning is lifting the lid when it’s all done. I just feel like I never know what I’m going to find in there. This time when we took off the lid my heart sank. There was tomato pulp everywhere. It looked to me like our worst batch yet. As I looked closer, I noticed huge chunks of tomato floating in the water in the pot. We were completely baffled as to how half a tomato could find it’s way out of a jar. But then as we lifted the first couple of jars out of the canner, I noticed a huge crack in one of the jars. It turned out all the tomato bits floating around were from a jar that had broken in two. The others were just fine. Siphoning was minimal, if there was any at all. This is the first time in all the canning I’ve done that I’ve ever had a jar break, and I was so happy to realize that the rest of the batch was fine that I really didn’t care about the broken one.
I think now I can say that I’ve officially had my fill of tomatoes for this year. From now on they’re going right into the freezer in gallon freezer bags as they ripen. I know that one day this winter when there’s a foot or two of snow on the ground, I’ll be more than happy to thaw a few bags of tomatoes and make a big pot of sauce.
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you did it! I’ve run out of freezer space and had been toying with canning, and I really appreciate these posts of yours.
Glad to be of help! I know once you get started with canning you’ll be hooked!
I’m so glad to hear that it was a success this time around. It must have been an odd moment to be staring at a huge chunk of tomato, wondering how it slipped out of its jar.
Thanks! Yes, it sure was baffling to see those big chunks of tomato.
I would gladly sacrifice a jar to the canning gods in exchange for having it all done ;)
So happy for your success!
Haha! I agree. Thanks!
We’re looking at finally getting a pressure canner this year, so reading these posts has been really useful. So glad you had success this time around!
I’m still getting to know my pressure canner, and I haven’t used it for anything but tomatoes yet. What I’m really excited to try canning is chicken/vegetable broth. I like to make big batches, and it takes up a lot of freezer space. I’ll be sure to do a post on that when I get around to it.
In the past few years, I’ve canned more than a hundred jars of tomato sauce of some sort. Only once when I lifted a jar out of the hot water did the bottom just fall off! I’d never seen a thing like that. I reuse my jars so I don’t think it was that – just one jar with some weakened glass. I too was relieved it didn’t impact the rest of the cans. Good job! You’ll be so happy come January.
I know a broken jar now and then is par for the course, so I feel pretty lucky to have only lost one so far out of the hundreds of jars I’ve canned.
I can’t think of a more beautiful sight! A shelf of home canned produce!