When your garden vegetables just keep on giving a bountiful harvest, what does one do? Well, the past two weeks I have been so busy canning practically every day.
The tomato plants are loaded with ripening fruit so I have been picking and letting them fully ripen on the kitchen counter.
To prepare them for my sauces, I core them and cut them in half. I remove the seeds and place them with the skin side facing up on a large cookie sheet.
I will then roast them in the oven at 425° F. for about 20 minutes or until the skins are puckering. After letting them cool down the skins will separate easily from the tomato.
The next step is to saute some onion, garlic, and peppers, all chopped of course. Then I add the tomato pulp to the sauteed mixture and cook them down until they thicken up a bit. I do mash them a bit as they are cooking so the tomatoes become smaller pieces. I guess you could chop them beforehand, but I find mashing them works well for me.
As they cook, I add in some kosher salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and basil for flavoring the sauce.
As the tomato sauce cooks down, I prepare the pint jars for the canning process. The jars have to be sterile and hot before jarring the mixture. Then to each jar, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice is added and filled with the sauce leaving one inch of head space.
Debubble any air from the jars by running a chopstick, which I use, down through the sauce. Wipe the rims of the jar with a cloth and vinegar to make sure the lids will seal correctly. Add the lids and rings to each jar being sure not to over-tighten the rings.
After processing the tomatoes in a water bath canner for 35 minutes the chunky sauce is preserved for future use.
I will be using this round of sauce for the pizzas I will be making over the winter months. I even cheated and had to make one since I just could not resist the wonderful aroma coming from the sauce as it was cooking.
I have to admit the pizza was awesome and I know that my family will be enjoying more pizzas to come. That is what is so wonderful about preserving one's garden harvest for future use. I still have much to do and will be sharing more posts about how I am preserving the bounty from this year's garden.
Until next time, this is Sunscape
Sun. Scape. Ing Your Day
