canning catastrophe

Friday, August 17, 2007

Well, not exactly a catastrophe. Mostly making lemonade when life hands you lemons.

I bought from my CSA 12 lbs of tomatoes this week in the hopes of canning pizza sauce. I looked in my recipe books about canning sauce and came up with what I figured was the most common method for canning. It boiled down to this (no pun intended): Chop, cook, puree and strain, cook down by half, can. I used 6 lbs of my tomatoes and got: soup. A wonderful, very yummy, entirely local (onions, garlic, basil and tomatoes) tomato soup. Which is a disaster if you can’t stand tomato soup. (I can’t, but I have someone in the house who adores it.. so mischief managed.)

So I tried again last nite. My theory..  I was blitzing the good stuff and straining it out. So last nite I rearranged my method and came up with this: chop, cook, strain out juice and reserve, cook down, can. I saved the juice for 2 reasons. It would make a good base for my next veggie soup stock (I make ALOT of vegetable soups) and I had it on hand to top off the jars. Jars need to be filled to 1/2 an inch from the top. I used about 1/2 a cup of the reserved juice to top off the 2nd qt of sauce. And I am much happier with the thickness and consistancy of the sauce.

Pizza Sauce for Canning
6 lbs of tomatoes (about 20 tomatoes)
1 cup of onions
8 garlic cloves
1 tbl olive oil
basil to taste

Chop the onions and garlic, set aside. Chop and seed tomatoes. (I left the skins on, they don’t bother me in sauce.)  Put the olive oil in a pan and add the garlic and onion. Cook until soft. Add tomatoes. Cook until they release their juice (about 25-35 minutes.) Strain. Reserve juice and return pulp to pan. Cook down until thick (about an hr). Place in clean qt jars (top off with liquid as needed to reach 1/2 inch from top) and seal. Process in a water bath for 35 minutes.