Let's geek out about tomatoes

One of my favorite ways to preserve tomatoes (darn you Dan Quayle, I always second-guess my spelling of the plural) is to roast halved tomatoes (350-375F) with onion wedges, garlic cloves, herbs and salt of course, until everything is nicely collapsed and soft and a bit charred in place. Then I slip the skins from the tomatoes and garlic, buzz the tomato skins in the food processor for a bit to break them up and then add all the rest of the juicy goodness. I freeze quart-sized portions to use in sauces, as a soup base (excellent!), etc. Sometimes I add a bit of orange juice in which case thyme is an especially lovely pairing.

Hm... I've never done that for tomatoes. Just sanitized jars, tomatoes, a bit of salt and then a final boil. I use typical glass Mason jars.

I add lemon juice to my tomatoes. My mom doesn't add any to hers but she pressure cans her tomatoes and I water bath mine.

I add lemon juice rather than citric acid, Prefer the bottled organic variety for its consistency across the bottles.

I meant bottled organic lemon juice for consistency across the canned jars of tomatoes

Why are we adding acid to tomatoes when canning? Is this something to do with boil canning or for pressure as well?

This explains it pretty well: http://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/preservation/uwex_addacidtomatoes.pdf

Great advice. Those green zebras look very interesting.

I don't know if you get it in the US but here we have a drink made from tomato juice, clam juice and spices called Clamato. It's the most amazing drink. Add vodka and a celery stick to it and you get a Caesar (drink not salad). Your bloody mary reminded me of how yummy that is... I wonder... how hard would it be to make my own Clamato Juice? Where does one even get clam juice?

Slow roasting with garlic and olive oil is how I make "sun dried tomatoes" as well. I have found that cherry tomatoes or other small tomatoes work best for this. I canned a couple different tomato sauces this year. At the beginning of the summer (well, actually more like the middle of it before I had tomatoes to can), I made tomato sauce by peeling the tomatoes and then cooking them down on the stovetop with spices. By the end of the summer, I got lazy and couldn't stand the thought of peeling more tomatoes. I found a recipe online for tomato sauce made without peeling the tomatoes. I just filled up a baking sheet with tomatoes cut in half (or quarters for the really big ones) and roasted them with olive oil, garlic and whatever herbs I happened to have around. Then I put them in my blender and blended them until they formed a smooth sauce. If you don't have a high powered blender you will likely have to strain your sauce after blending them. We have found we actually like the unpeeled sauce better than the peeled version. I have dreams of some year canning enough diced tomatoes to last us all year, but I know that I will get sick of all the peeling and end up just making more sauce.

ktr, a food mill makes quick work of separating cooked tomato pulp from the skins (and the seeds), and the resulting puree has more texture than tomato sauce put through a blender--a good thing, in my book.

A good tool for many other kitchen tasks where you want to separate soft pulp from hard or fibrous matter, too.

Good point. I forgot about the food mill. My parents use one when canning. I like not having to cook my sauce down though and I need to get rid of things in my kitchen, not add to it, so I'll probably stick to the method I've been using but I can see how the food mill would produce a different texture.

Sheesh.. Found on the Taunton Press site... Kitchen GARDEN. Not sure what a Gatden is.

I adore seedsavers. I think they are absolutely amazing and it's thrilling to see people dedicated to preserving different varieties of food crops.

Sadly, shipping seeds across the 49th has had a bit of trouble this last year or so. A lot of seeds are 'accidentally' damaged as they pass that line (both ways). For the most part, importing seeds small scale, poses no big legal issues, but perhaps they have some new processing equipment that crushes/irradiates? I'm hesitant to order seeds from The US because of this new problem.

However, a great thing happened last year. Our local library decided that in addition to lending books, they would also lend seeds. With the seeds came free garden and seed saving training. You 'borrow' seeds like the Wild Cherry Tomato, grow them in the garden, then return the seed you save from your crop.

If you get a chance to grow the Wild Cherry Tomato, I highly recommend it. It only takes two plants to fulfill all your household, your friend's households, their friends... &c tomato needs for the summer. Early setter (ripe 10 days earlier than greenhouse tomatoes) and last to stop producing in the fall. The only downside is that they are about 50/50 seed/flesh and I think that I would really like something a bit more fleshy this year.

Never canned tomatoes before, but am looking forward to trying it. Do you have a favourite recipe? What is a pickled tomato like?

Yes, I do love those seed catalogues. My grandfather use to start his tomatoes today (Feb 1st), every year. A couple of weeks early in my opinion, but it's got me thinking about tomatoes.

Last year I grew a tiny tomato called Wild Cherry. It was fantastic. All the flavour of a big tomato crammed into the size of a marble. Perfect tomato for cooking, just toss a handful into whatever is on the stove. However, the ones I dried have loads of flavour, but terribly tough skins.

This year I'm excited to try something new. Something that preserves well.