Preserving Summer: Crushed Tomatoes

I remember my mom canning when I was young, mostly applesauce and jams. It was an all-day production, at least with the applesauce, and something I never really thought to do myself. But as we’ve been savoring our local summer produce and starting to think about the long winter days just around the corner, it seemed a shame not to try and preserve at least a few jars of tomato sauce. Plus, everyone else was doing it. Our CSA farm offered up a half bushel of canning tomatoes (seconds), but it was just before the boy’s birthday party weekend and that was the last thing I had time for. When the following week’s email extended the offer for one more week, it seemed like fate. I emailed my reservation and began scouring the web for canning instructions.

Friday at lunch, I stopped by the McLean Market and then headed out to Potomac Vegetable Farms’ Vienna farmstand. The farm is located Just down the road from Tysons Corner, where the McMansions are rapidly encroaching on every available spot of green around the farm. Last year, we got a few peaches in our share from the neighboring orchard - but it has since been replaced by a new development. The farm is actually divided by the development, so our farmers have to drive their trucks through their backyards to go back and forth between the crops.

Back at home, I decided to keep things simple. I followed the crushed tomatoes recipe here, omitting the salt and adding the lemon juice per USDA recommendations, to protect against botulism. I wound up staying up late Friday night working on this as tropical storm Hanna (coincidentally the name of my tomato farmer!) was heading our way and I was afraid of losing power with pots full of sauce on the stove. Of course, the power never went out. But, while this was simpler than I had imagined, it was also time-intensive and definitely safer done after the toddler’s bedtime.

The steps are fairly straight-forward:

• wash, peel, core and quarter tomatoes (to peel, blanch in boiling water than ice bath to cool)
• bring tomatoes to boil in large pot, stirring and crushing, boil for 5 minutes
• boil jars to sterilize
• add 1 T lemon juice to each pint jar (2 T for quart jars)
• fill jars leaving 1/2 inch headroom
• top with lids and process in boiling water for 35 minutes (45 minutes for quart jars)

In the end, my 20+ pounds of tomatoes produced 8 pints jarred sauce and two more pints in the freezer, with a few pounds leftover that I made into a late summer harvest soup.

Short-Cut: If you don’t want to go through the canning process, you can freeze your cooked tomatoes in freezer bags or reusable containers. I read in several places that you still need to add lemon juice or vinegar, but if you boil your sauce before and after freezing, that should also kill pesky bacteria.

This was a fairly fool-proof recipe but I do recommend doing some reading about canning techniques before getting started. The USDA Home Canning guides are available here for further background.

Tags: canning, potomac vegetable farms, preserving, summer, tomato

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