Any hints/tips and recipes would be much appreciated. This will be my first time trying this. If it's successful, maybe next year I'll plant 10 Roma tomato plants.
Johnny - I thought I read previously that you grow a lot of Roma tomatoes?
I only grow romas. I think I have 22 this year. I would give you a recipe for sauce but I’m on a tablet over at my daughters.
I also make tomato powder from my romas. It’s like dehydrated tomato paste. Great in soups and other recipes.
/johnny
The only advice I have is when you blanch your tomatoes to remove the skin do it for only 10 to maybe 20 seconds at most in rolling boiling water and cool them in an ice bath right away. The skin will slip right off.
Add a little lime juice to the jars you use for canning and you will be successful. they should keep for years.
Go for growing more tomatoes!
I usually put a teaspoon of lemon juice in my tomatoes just to make sure that they are acidic enough.
I can the tomatoes, and then when I want a tomato sauce, I just throw together whatever it is I want and cook it down, and the recipe is almost never the same.
I do have some in my canning book though, so I’ll take a look and see what I can find, and let you know later.
This should be right down Johnny’s alley.
Thanks for the picture. Those are gorgeous.
A nice way to use your romas, cut in half and scoop out any pulp. Salt and sprinkle on some granulated garlic, chopped fresh basil and dried oregano. Sprinkle on or spray olive oil. Roast on a cookie sheet about 200 degrees until they look halfway dried out. Great cut up on pasta, or with some goat cheese dropped in the center. I have sliced these lengthwise and used my food saver to seal small bags of them and used them all winter long. Great on pizza too.
I can my own sauce from my own sauce tomatoes.
I don’t do anything but make the tomato sauce. I add any spices etc after I open the jars and go to use it. I was never sure if the spices being added would require pressure canning, so I just do it plain.
One thing I do to save jars, is to drain off as much of the liquid from the tomato juice as possible. That way, you’re not canning any more water than need be. Just don’t take too much out or you may find yourself having to add some when you go to use it.
Also, they warn you to never do this when canning, but that’s a sure fire way to get me to try something.
I put my clean, dry canning jars in the over set at 200 and NO HIGHER. It gets the jars to about the temperature of the hot sauce and i have yet to have one break on me doing that. I can see where it could be dangerous, but it works exceedingly well for me.
Not that I’m telling you to do it. Just sayin......