Posted in Putting Food By
Are they a fruit? Are they a vegetable? Who cares! A garden just wouldn't be a garden without those luscious red orbs hanging fat and succulent from the summer vine.
I love to can jars and jars of tomato sauce in the late summer (that's when we get our tomatoes out here on California's Northern coast). When I first started out canning tomatoes, I kept reading conflicting information on whether or not tomatoes ought to be canned in a water bath, which is appropriate for fruits, or in a pressure canner - necessary for canning vegetables.
The crux of this debate rested on whether or not commercially grown tomatoes contain enough acid to be safely water bath canned. The acid is what kills off the bad bacteria that can cause botulism poisoning. There is no way of knowing the acidic content of homegrown tomatoes. Therefore, it was decided by the powers that be that if one added something acidic to the tomatoes like lemon juice, vinegar or citric acid (powdered Vitamin C) they could be safely processed in a boiling water bath. Otherwise, they need to be pressured canned.
If you are planning on putting up whole tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato juice, etc. just add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint after you have filled it with the hot tomatoes, 2 TBS. for quarts. Then, process accordingly in a boiling water bath - usually 35 minutes for pints and 45 minutes for quarts.
Of course, if you add anything like peppers, mushrooms, onions - pretty much anything other than sweetener or herbs and spices - you will need to pressure can your tomatoes. So, do be sure to thorougly read any recipe for canning tomatoes and pick up a good book like Putting Food By by Janet Greene, et al. to make sure you are doing things right.
Lisa Vitello
Lisa is wife to Guy, mother to six great kids and publisher of the New Harvest Homestead newsletter - a bi-monthly electronic journal for Christian women who love the home-centered life. Canning & preserving food is one of the many topics covered in each issue. Visit Lisa's website at www.newharvesthomestead.com or stop by her blog and say hello!
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