Canning 2024

[bethzaring]

In the past few days I canned 6 1/2 pints of chokecherry jelly and 15 pints of sweet corn. DH has his own garden by his shop, about 1/4 of a mile from the house. His plot is right on an acequia so he has unlimited water to grow corn.

 

[blissful]

We will end up canning tomatoes later, near 9:30 pm. We didn't have quite enough tomatoes so he went to grocery and brought back 4 bags of tomatoes for $4, reduced produce. That filled the roaster and another 4 qts which is all boiling down. The jars are ready. Probably about 12 qts.

 

[blissful]

So far we're waterbath canning one batch of ketchup, wide mouth pint jars, tattler lids, from paste. 14 fit in the canner, 1 will have to wait until the next batch.

 

[bethzaring]

I just pressure canned 14 pints of pizza sauce with sausage. This is all the tomato products I have for this season. Our growing season keeps getting shorter. We expect our first freeze tonight so I will put blankets on some tomato plants, to at least keep us in fresh salsa for a few weeks. The fresh tomatoes you see are what have been collected the past few weeks. I already had 3 quarts of prepared sauce in the freezer to add.

 

[blissful]

Awesome @bethzaring

We only made 3 batches of thick tomato sauce this year. 36 quart jars, not a great year for tomatoes.

We finished the ketchup, 30 pint jars but one blew out the bottom, so 29. I'll find out tomorrow if they all sealed or not. Labels are made.

 

[bethzaring]

Awesome @bethzaring

We only made 3 batches of thick tomato sauce this year. 36 quart jars, not a great year for tomatoes.

We finished the ketchup, 30 pint jars but one blew out the bottom, so 29. I'll find out tomorrow if they all sealed or not. Labels are made.

One of the jars in the second round canning the pizza sauce, didn't seal, so I will be making pizza tomorrow. It won't take the full pint so I will freeze the leftover sauce in the pint jar.

 

[blissful]

We stuck the labels on the ketchup this morning. 29 jars, 1 didn't seal. That one goes in the fridge. The rest go in the pantry.
From the last time I made ketchup we average using 16 oz every 12 days. So the current batch should last almost 1 year.

 

[taxlady]

When I have made ketchup. it has gotten used up a lot faster than the store bought stuff does. Well, I don't much care for the store bought stuff. The homemade stuff is sooooo much better that I actually use it.

 

[blissful]

When I have made ketchup. it has gotten used up a lot faster than the store bought stuff does. Well, I don't much care for the store bought stuff. The homemade stuff is sooooo much better that I actually use it.

We use it for part of the recipe for stir fry sauce and mostly for air fried potatoes, either alone or with balsamic vinegar added.

 

[pepperhead212]

This isn't for canning, but for freezing. Yesterday, I cleaned up all of the tomatoes I had, and ground them up, and cooked them down slowly, in a NS wok. It was almost 192 oz (6 qts), and I had to keep about 2 qts in a bowl, until it had boiled down some. It eventually cooked down to just under 50 oz. I'll freeze it in 1 and 2 oz portions - maybe a few larger.
Just under 192 oz of ground up tomatoes, cooked down to just under 50 oz of paste, to be frozen. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Here's the gold cherries that I ground up, that lightened this a little, along with a few other larger yellow ones, but most are red ones.
about 24 oz of Sunsugar and Zluta Golda, ready to blend - one of 8 batches being cooked down to tomato paste. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

 

[dragnlaw]

I'm curious pepper - how long did it take to boil it down to that paste?

 

[pepperhead212]

dragn, I don't know exactly how long, but it started yesterday, and finished today, and probably over 24 hrs. I cooked it on an induction burner, and had it sort of foaming up on 3, so I turned it to 2, and occasionally would stir it with a silicone spatula as I was nearby, but it never formed any layer on the bottom. Eventually, it started getting thicker (fortunately, I have a very large splatter cover for this!), so I turned it to 1, and about midnight I turned it off, put the glass cover on, and turned it back on about 7 am (still warm then - I wasn't worried about leaving concentrated tomatoes out this long, with the acid in them), and this evening, I turned it up to 5, and stirred it several minutes, like I would when cooking down a chile paste, and eventually got it thick enough.

I have made paste much faster, by adding some dried tomatoes to the liquefied tomatoes, to thicken them much more to start out.

 

[dragnlaw]

Thanks pepper. Was just curious, figured it would be at least 24 hours, if not more.