After dreaming about it for years and recently watching insane numbers of YouTube videos on the topic, I got up the courage to try canning.
I felt like a kid at Christmas, showing up 10 minutes before my favorite farm stand opened. I was so excited! They had “canning tomatoes” cheaper by the pound, but they were greenish — no thanks! Instead I picked up almost 20 lbs of fresh Roma tomatoes. Yum!
If you’ve ever been curious about canning, it’s not as hard you might think. However, unlike cooking, you can’t be creative with canning. You have to follow every single step. The stakes are high — botulism is odor-free, taste-free, and deadly. So, visit the USDA and Extension Service websites (in Nerdy Food Stuff) for full details.
That said, the fear factor is far outweighed by the satisfaction of gleaming jars of summer-ripened goodness in your cupboard. Come January, when the cold and damp seeps into my bones, I’ll be so happy to make a bowl of my own tomato soup. Or chili. Or lasagne. You get the idea. Use care, and you’ll enjoy your harvest.
Here’s how it went!
Tomato halves in water
17 lbs of tomatoes in pint jars — hot pack method
Ingredients: Tomatoes, lemon juice, salt
1. Wash tomatoes
2. Boil them for 30-45 seconds and then plunge into ice water to ease in removing skins.
3. Remove core (optional), remove skins, slice in half and squeeze out seeds (also optional). My hands were too messy to take photos of this part. 
4. Cover tomatoes with water and boil for 5 minutes.
5. Add 1tsp of salt and 1Tbs of lemon juice to each jar. Put tomatoes into prepared jars, adding cooking water until there’s 1/2 inch headspace. (I also prepared some heirloom red and yellow tomatoes – aren’t they gorgeous?) Squishing in as many as possible is encouraged.
6. Wipe rims for a good seal and put lids and screw bands on.
7. Put jars into the rack (pictured here) and lower into the boiling water. Wait until water begins to boil again and start timer for 40 minutes.
8. Using a jar lifter, put jars on towels to cool for 12 hours. The white stuff on the lids and jars is evidence of how hard our water is. It wipes off easily with a towel and a little vinegar/water solution.
- Two cool things happen at this point. One is that after you remove them from the pot, you can see the contents continuing to boil inside the jar.
- The other satisfying part of this stage is, as the jars begin to cool, you start to hear the little snap the jar lids make when the vaccum sets.
9. Store. When walking by, sneak peeks in the cupboard and grin at how gorgeous they look. Reorganize your pantry for maximum effect. Ask everyone who visits to oooh and ahhh over your beautifully canned produce.
Lessons learned
- Prepare: I forgot that I needed lemon juice and salt — and ran out of both. I made a list of all the implements I used so that it will be more efficient next time (including a sharpened paring knife).
- Budget time: This took way more time than I imagined. I started at noon and finished cleaning up the kitchen around 9. Running out of ingredients added to it, but I found that prepping the next batch could be done while the previous batch processed.
- Follow all the steps: I was tired and trying to rush toward the end, and forgot to wipe my rims before putting on the lid. Two of those cans didn’t vacuum seal as a result. Slow down. Be present in the moment. Canning is kind of Zen.
To ponder
All told, I spent about $1 per jar on the ingredients alone. I know the produce is fresher than cans at the store, but they’re sold for 50 cents each. I’m trying to figure out how to get my produce as fresh, but less expensively.
Will I do this again? You betcha!
