Thursday, October 6, 2011

Putting Up My Fall Harvest - Canning Tomato Sauce


I haven't had much experience with canning. My mother is a "Master Food Preserver" so I haven't had to learn how to do it myself. I just pick up a bag full of jams, pickles, & sauces every time I go for a visit. But she lives far and I decided it was time to stop being lazy and get a little bit deeper in to practicing what I preach. 

Those lovely jars of pasta sauce up there. That's all me! I got a bunch of tomatoes at the crop swap last weekend so I did a harvest of my own and joined them with the ones for the swap. I was SURE it would be enough for 4 or 5 jars of pasta sauce. Obviously I had never made pasta sauce for canning before. Those 2 jars are all my millions of tomatoes gave me, but I'm sure they are two amazingly delicious jars of sauce. Hopefully I'll get my hands on some more tomatoes soon and make another batch. 

Traditionally, you remove the seeds & skin when making pasta sauce. I think that is a huge waste of both time and nutrients. Instead, I just ran all my tomatoes through a blender, skin, seeds, & all. I then sauteed up some onions & garlic in olive oil, added rosemary, the tomato puree, basil, & parsley. A pinch or two of salt and let the whole thing simmer till it was the thickness I desired. 

I'm no expert, so I don't want to give any instructions for canning but there is a TON of information online. A quick search will turn up more info then you could ever look through. 

3 comments:

  1. Kendra

    I also can a lot of the product that comes out of my garden, but in the case of tomatoe sauce, I prefer to freeze it. I will make up a big batch, and then put it, 2C at a time in vacuum sealed bags, then lay the bags on a cookie sheet in the chest freezer - they end up freezing flat. I can then put them in the freezer inside as if they were books on a bookshelf. I do a similar thing with some other veggies - butternut squash and pumpkin purees. I think that for tomatoe sauce, and squash puree, the flavour is better when they are frozen rather than processed. For the tomatoe sauce, I usually add a bunch of fresh basil just before freezing, and the basil taste stays nice when you reheat the sauce whereas it is harder to keep that flavour with the processed jars.

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  2. But you are a master lactofermenter!

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