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Sunday, September 16, 2012

When Life Gives you Tomatoes, Can some Spaghetti Sauce

Every fall, Hope and I take a whole bunch of Plum Tomatoes and make a few batches of sauce in the canner.  Canning is one of those home activities that is a dying art.  My mother taught me how to do it and it really is a great way to save all those veggies you get in your garden.  It is not as hard as you think.  So, give it a try yourself...

First, we took a peck of Plum Tomatoes and rinsed in the sink with cold water...


Next, remove the stems, cut into quarters, and place into a 12 quart stock pot...


We drizzle some olive oil over the tomatoes to keep them from burning and give them a healthy grind of sea salt to help them break down.  Turn the heat on medium and cover the pot.  Every once in awhile, give them a good mash with a hand held potato masher to break them down.  Once you have a nice soupy mixture, run the liquid through a food mill with the coarse screen in place to separate the solids from the juice...


This is what it looks like once it has been through the mill...


You are now ready for spaghetti sauce.  Take one large sweet onion and dice...


Separate the cloves from one medium head of garlic, remove the skins, and mince...


Then, in a bowl I put in the following:

2 Tbsp granulated garlic
2 Tbsp Oregano
1 Tbsp Basil
2 Tsp Thyme
3 Bay Leaves



Saute your onion in a 12 quart stockpot with olive oil...


Once the onion starts to get translucent, add the spices to activate their oils.  Mix well...


Add your tomato juice to the top and bring to a boil.  Then, turn down heat and simmer for at least two hours...


While the sauce is reducing, I throw my quart canning jars in the dishwasher on the heated sanitize cycle.  Then, just before we are ready to can, we place the lids in a pot and boil for 20 minutes to sanitize...


The sauce gets ladled into a canning jar, the rim wiped clean, then sealed with a lid and a ring.  The jars go into a canner with boiling water.  Then, once the pot returns to a rolling boil, boil the jars for at least 20 minutes...


The jars then get removed from the bath and placed on a towel to cool down.  Now, for the important part.  Listen for your jars to seal.  You will hear a pop as the lids seal.  You can also push down on the lids the next morning to see if they have sealed.  If you can push them up and down with a clicking sound, they have not sealed and you should make sauce with that quart for dinner that night.  If they don't click, they have sealed and you can store them for at least one year.

When you use them, make sure the vacuum is still in place on each quart to be sure.  This canned sauce makes for a nice quick dinner throughout the year.  It is way better than the mass produced sauce you can buy at the grocery store.  We just saute some meat, add the sauce and paste, and simmer until reduced.

By the way, one peck (1/4 bushel) made 19 quarts of sauce.

Thanks for stopping by...

Bill

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