I took the plunge and acquired a pressure canner. After reading my new Ball book cover to cover and the instruction manual to the canner twice, I got some tomatoes from the farmer’s market so I could sail my new canner on its maiden voyage.
I sterilized and heated my jars. I simmered my lids.
I blanched.
I peeled. I chopped. I mashed. I used the little tool to get the air bubbles out and I measured the headroom.
All was going well until after the allotted 25 minutes and 10 pounds of pressure, this came out of my canner.
Egad! Those are some ugly tomatoes.
After many tears and posts to every canning forum I could find, it seems that my tomatoes are normal. I packed them raw (except for the blanching and the 2,346 degrees that the canner is supposed to get inside there) and that’s how raw tomatoes look fresh out of the canner.
Ick! That is so NOT what I was expecting.
Of the seven jars I did, two did not seal so they are in my fridge awaiting vegetable soup making later this week. The other five I’ll probably open and use fairly soon because I don’t like the look of them. And, looks are everything in the dead of winter when you need a summer tomato. This much I know.
Next on the canning agenda is to try the water bath feature with some blackberry preserves. My blackberries are huge, sweet and plentiful.
I am sort of a canner! Yay, me!
Heh…I sort of recall Nanny’s looking kind of all icky, too, but she never canned them raw or whole. She made juice out of them, first, then canned the juice.
I tellya…nothing tastes QUITE like cream of tomato soup made with homemade tomato juice.
I used to can with my grama when I was a kid. I always wanted to do it, but just haven’t gotten my act together!
Are you going to try pickles?
I was just thinking of attempting to can tomatoes! Maybe I won’t now.:>) I have only used a pressure canner for green beans. Other than that I do fruit with a water bath. My mom told me that you can peel, chop and freeze tomatoes to use in chili, sauces etc. I might just try that!
That is what canned tomatoes look like out the canner, but hopefully you can pack them tighter next time and there won’t be so much liquid. There is a learning curve for sure. But regardless of how they look, they make delicious vegetable soup in the dead of winter.
I have my grandmother’s old canner and use it often. Can’t wait for ripe tomatoes around here.
[...] is my pickle “canning”. I haven’t braved the actual canner again after the “Tomato Incident”. So, refrigerator pickles it is! Here is the recipe we used the first time. Since then Poppy [...]
[...] Remember those tomatoes I canned a while back with what I thought were disasterous results? Turns out they were quite normal which I was thrilled to learn, but that tomato water you see in my canned tomatoes will rise to the top of your partially processed tomatoes and you can siphon it off or pour it off. Once you siphon off the water, proceed to cook down the thick tomatoes that settled to the bottom overnight into your sauce. It cuts your cooking time in half! [...]