Canning Fruit – Homemade Tinned Tomatoes
One of the easiest methods of preserving fruit is ‘canning’ or ‘bottling’ at home. The following technique can be used for any fruit, though you may wish to add some week sugar syrup, rather than brine to other fruits. We home preserve cherries each year in exactly this way.
If your tomato harvest didn’t work out quite as well as you would like, have a look at these Top Tomato Growing Tips.
Canning Tomatoes at Home
Whenever canning fruit at home make sure you have blemish free, ripe (but not over-ripe specimens). Small bruises and so on may be cut out but diseased fruits should not be included in the home canning process.
- First remove any stalks from the tomatoes and score the skin with a sharp knife. Put all the fruits in a large bowl.
- Cover the tomatoes with boiling water and leave for a few minutes as the skins loosen.
- Remove the skins with a sharp knife.
- Pack the skinned tomatoes tightly into warm sterilised jars. Push them down with a wooden spoon to ensure as many as possible are in each jar and that they sit in their own tomato juice.
- Put 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice in every litre jar of tomatoes plus a pinch of salt (optional).
- The tomatoes should be covered in much of their own juice but if any space is left top up with boiling water. Leave 1cm of space empty to allow for expansion and prevent the contents of the jars reacting with the lids.
- Wipe the jar rims and put on the lids loosely.
- Put the jars into a pan of warm water (which should nearly reach the lids) and slowly bring to the boil. The pan should be lined with cloth or wood so the jars do not come into direct contact with its hot base. You may wish to wrap the jars in some cloth or newspaper too, to ensure they do not bang into each other.
- Simmer for 40 minutes.
- Remove the jars from the water and tightly screw up the lids.
These home canned tomatoes will store for a year in the dark. Most vegetables cannot be home canned in this way as they are not acidic enough to keep without bacteria, moulds and yeasts taking over. But do not be concerned as fruit is much more acidic and this heat processing takes care of any micro organisms. This is a safe, easy and simple method of home preserving tomatoes even without a thermometer or oven.
Tomatoes are a truly prolific crop and are something of use all year long. If you currently buy canned tomatoes or tinned tomatoes why not bottle your own and save yourself cash all year long? Even if you do not grow tomatoes it can be worth canning tomatoes at home when supplies are cheap.
Canned tomatoes for us, are a real staple. We use them for the base of many sauces, soups and stews. Hey they’re great just as they are, warm on toast with lots of freshly ground black pepper.
How to Bottle Tomato Passata
If you sieve your skinned tomatoes (pushing through all the pulp and juice with a wooden spoon) you will make passata. If you would rather cheat a little you could simply blend or liquidise the tomatoes (skin and all would be healthiest). Simply fill your jars with this and add lemon juice before heat treating in the hot water bath method, detailed above.
How to Bottle Fruit
You follow the steps above but top up jars with a weak sugar syrup and alter the simmering times as so:
- Soft fruit (and thinly sliced stone fruit) need 2 minutes simmering.
- Stone fruit and citrus fruit need 10 minutes simmering.
You can buy pressure canners and all manner of other expensive equipment but you don’t need too. If you’re new to home preserving it makes much more sense to learn how to can food with the tools you already have. Learning how to bottle tomatoes at home is a great way to start as they are so useful in the kitchen.
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What great timing, my other half was making home-made baked beans at the weekend and lamenting the fact he had to use passata from the supermarket. Now we can have a go at making it ourselves this summer! Thank you!
Springtime’s last blog post..Keep it in the family, or amongst friends
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That’s just spooky!
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Tomatoes are great for canning (I’m an American. I mean “tinning”.) because of their high acid content… very safe! They’re also easy to grow in massive quantities. Moreover, I’ve read that cooked tomatoes (e.g., what they have to be if canned) actually release more nutrients that raw ones do. Not to mention how MANY ways they can be used!
Hurray for tinned tomatoes!
almostgotit’s last blog post..Silverfinger
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Good to meet up with another home canner! I usually put up 50 or more quarts of tomatoes in September for use throughout the year, also pasta sauce, salsa, etc. And non-tomato-based fruit and veggies too.
Hubby and I are just starting a new blog to chronicle our long-standing *from scratch* living. Come on by!
http://food-from-scratch.blogspot.com
Valerie’s last blog post..Seed Exchange
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Didn’t you do a post on sun-drying tomatoes recently? My Lebanese villager relatives used to dry them on sheets on the roof, in the sun. Then they would make “tomato marmalade” out of the resulting product. I prefer California-style sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil however.
On the American side (my mom is American) I remember very well how the women of the family would put up (preserve) tomatoes, relishes, pickles and conserves in the fall. We also lived in a house with a special deep freezer for a time, and mom and grandma froze tomato juice and pumpkin puree in quantity, along with a quarter of a side of beef.
Leila Abu-Saba’s last blog post..Cabbage Salad for Helayne
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Mrs.Dirty Boots Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
I would love a large deep freeze! There is a post about sun dried tomatoes. We make them every year because they really are tasty! I’ve put a search bar on the right so hopefully it will be easier to find things on the site! Tomato marmalade is something I was planning on doing for the first time this summer, but hadn’t realised you could make it from dried tomatoes. Was it any good?
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Wow, thats really cool and useful! I’d love to try doing that, especialy if i grew the tomatoes myself.
x
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Mrs.Dirty Boots Reply:
March 11th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Have a go Tallullah, it really is easy!
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[...] cannot really have too many tomatoes because they are so easy to freeze, bottle or dry. Blitz them up and heat treat to bottle your own passata even! Or you can search out [...]
[...] When fermentation ends you can heat process the jars as they are, or decant the kraut to smaller ones first. The canned kraut will need to be processed for 50 mins using the hot water bath canning method. [...]
Well I’ll definitely be trying this when my tomato crop ripens – that is, if we can convince the 2-year-old to stop picking them green. I may have to find a green tomato chutney/pickles recipe instead!
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I have about a gallon of natural juice from canning peaches. Can you tell me how to make and can a pancake syrup from this juice?
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You can also try canning fruits and veggies. But among them all, I love to can tomatoes more. Thanks for such an informative site. Simple but jam packed with information.
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Can I heat reat my bottled tomatoes using a microwave, please ?
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Mrs.Dirty Boots Reply:
September 28th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
Sue I have never owned a microwave (yeah I know I’m the only one!) so I have no idea. But it looks like the USDA say its not a good idea http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/usda/GUIDE%201%20Home%20Can.pdf there is loads of info at http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/publications_usda.html
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