Okay picking up from the last post, BL arrived and I aready had peeled, cored and sorta un-seeded the tomatoes. I also had going a boiling pot of hot water, a small sauce pan of hot water with the lids in them and the canner boiling with empty glass jars in them.
The way we did it was I would take out a jar, empty it of water, put it on a towel and BL would fill it with raw tomatoes and remove air bubbles. Then I would pour water from the pot into the jar giving it 1/2 inch of head space. BL would put on the lid, and screw on the band. We did this and put all the jars in the canner when I realized I forgot a step.
I was supposed to add 1/2 teaspoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. So all the jars had to come back out and I put the missing stuff in and then they went back into the canner. There was about 1-2 inches of boiling water covering the jars. I put the lid on and boiled them for 40 minutes. Once 40 minutes was up, we took them out tightened the bands, and let them cool. Once cooled, they got labeled.
So now I have lots of locally grown shelf stable tomatoes available for recipies and sauce making.
Day: August 17, 2009
Can Can
Yesterday at the Bloomingdale Farmer’s Market I ran into MVSQ’s Si and mentioned I was going to buy 20-some odd pounds of tomatoes to can. On the Eckington Listserv or was it Scotts Bloomingdale list there was an announcement that one of the vendors was selling a box of tomatoes for $12. I started talking about my plans for canning and Si said I need to blog about it. So, here’s the first.
Supplies- I picked up my canning kit some time ago at the 5th Street Hardware store. They didn’t have it in stock so they ordered it for me and I picked it up several days later. It’s the Ball Canning Kit item # 6096606 and it comes with everything you need for hot water canning and costs about $55 bucks. I also grabbed some 1/2 pint and 1 pint jars from the store as well. The kit comes with the Ball Blue Book Canning Guide, which is how I sort of figured out WTF I’m doing.
So that afternoon I had Mrs. DC Education Blog, BL, come over so the near sighted could lead the blind. I had already canned a lot of strawberry vanilla fruit spread, some pineapples and some peaches. And so BL came to see how this canning thing is done.
I had already pealed and sorta quartered and sort of seeded the tomatoes when she came. They were of the seedy variety and at a certain point I gave up on trying to get all the seeds. I discovered I didn’t have to wait long, or for the skins to crack, after letting them bob around in boiling water and then dunking them in ice cold water. Too long in the boiling water and those puppies cooked in their skins, scalding my hands when I went to peel, core and deseed them.
Okay this post is getting long, so I’ll do a part two later.