Yay! It’s canning time again 😉 The season of tired feet, stained fingers, sticky floors and oh so yummy food filling up the empty shelves in our basement again! Every year when the ‘firstfruits’ of the garden come on (which is usually the green beans), we groan because we know that it’s that time of year again! But once you get started, and get into a rhythm of it, it’s not so bad and you feel quite accomplished and everything is worth it when you see the pretty jars taking the place of where the empty ones were 😉 Plus when you have an army of sisters…that makes everything better right there.
I was going to do just a post with pictures of doing tomato sauce, but thought it might be more fun (and useful) to add our recipe with it. Usually we have a whole bathtub full of tomatoes, but this year they didn’t do quite as well. Leah and I decided we liked doing them a bushel at a time instead of a bathtub at a time 😀
Now for the recipe 😀
Wash your tomatoes and cut them into halves or quarters. Just big enough for your blender. Of course, it’s probably a good idea to cut out any bad looking spots. Our tomatoes had plenty of those 😛
Put them in your blender…
…and blend!
Pour the pureé through a colander to catch any lumps you missed and the little pieces of skin that didn’t quite get blended up 🙂
Grease a 9×13″ pan with cooking spray, even the handles and edges. It’ll make cleaning a lot easier 😉 Then pour the pureé in.
Stack them in your 350° F oven and stir them every 30 minutes at first. Then as it gets thicker, stir them every 15 minutes.
When the sauce is thick enough to your liking (for us, that’s about 2- 2 1/2 hours later), pour the sauce into pint jars. Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint and stir it in the jar with a chopstick or the end of a wooden spoon to mix it in with the sauce. Leave a 1/4 inch headspace and wipe the rims clean. Place hot lids on the jars and process them in a hot water bath for 35 minutes, once the water comes to a boil.
Take them out of the canner and let them cool…then admire your handiwork 😉 Now you will have yummy homemade tomato sauce in the winter when you’re knee deep in snow (hopefully you’re knee deep in snow…those are the best winters 😉 )
Cleaning tip…after you’ve processed all that tomato sauce, you can take those messy pans outside and fill them up with water from the hose. Let them set overnight (or an hour or so), then scrub them with a wire scrubbie. It’s amazing how relatively quickly they clean up 😉
Hi! Thanks for sharing this – what a lovely new post. It’s so joyful to see the harvest being brought in and the cans of food being stocked up. I’ve been making tomato paste a base for cooking as well, and found a new method of simply chopping the tomatoes and cooking them to a paste over the stove, like making apple butter or jam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxzAU3U0fkQ Maybe that’ll cut down some steps for you?
God bless,
Beka
Hey Beka!
Thanks for sharing your video! Your’s looks really yummy with the added garlic and goodies! As you know from our recipe, ours is just tomatoes cooked down 🙂
I agree! It’s so satisfying to see all of the jars filling up the shelves in all of their pretty colors 😀
♥Jessica
Wow!! Look’s like you all have been really busy. That tomato sauce look’s so yummy!!! =)
That is cool! I’ve never tried baking it, but you make it sound so easy! 🙂
We are almost done with our canning season. All that’s left is the fall veggies such as pulling the carrots and canning figs. The tomatoes finally gave out in mid August. We canned and canned those. The fall garden is already planted with our lettuces, turnips, greens, and radishes. With a few tomatoes plants and squash. They always do better in the spring/ fall for us. We can grow year around here. As long as you cover when the frost comes you will be fine lol. Also wanted to tell you that Emma is a year old on 10/4 :). She is getting so big so fast!!! I need to send you an email with some pictures of my little ginger haired baby:). And we have some gooooood news. I am expecting our second due march 14th. Very excited and can’t wait! Love y’all bunches, Kelsye.
Oh my goodness Kelsye! Congrats, congrats on the new little baby! 😀 Yes, do send pictures of Emma 😀 I can’t wait to see her!
Whew! I am kind of glad we live farther north, so that our garden can’t produce all year, lol! After our gardening and canning season, I’m ready for a break! Your garden sounds amazing!
♥lotsa hugs! 😉
Jessica
This post of yours is MUCH appreciated! We are overwhelmed with tomato harvest this year — so many! What to do with them all! I will try your method — sounds much easier than the way I have been processing them all so far. – — Tracy