So, yesterday while I was out doing lawn chores, Tracy was busy doing kitchen chores.
She readied up the kitchen and the 10 1/2 pounds of nice, red tomatoes that were ready to be sauced. We wanted to try the roasting method we had read about when we first used our Chinois to sauce frozen tomatoes last May.
After washing the tomatoes (no skinning necessary), Tracy cut each tomato in two (lengthwise) and laid them on baking sheets, cut side down. Then, the tomatoes were baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. She didn’t add anything at all to the tomatoes at this time.
The tomatoes came out having rendered a lot of watery juice and with wrinkly skins. Tracy mostly used shallow baking sheets. She said she’d use taller sided roasting pans next time.
After letting them cool a little, into the Chinois Cone they went. It didn’t take us long at all to turn those 10 1/2 pounds of ripe tomatoes into about 6+ quarts of seedless sauce. Tracy kept the Chinois full, and I supplied the little elbow grease necessary.
We added some nice peppers from the garden (fresh Bridge to Paris red pepper plus roasted cayenne and sweet pimento peppers). We’ll also add onions, garlic, basil, and maybe other herbs, all from the garden as well. Last year our experiments showed that this sauce is sweet enough without adding sugar, so we are adding no sugar this year.
This should reduce to about 4+ quarts which we will then process in our pressure canner.
We found this method to be really easy and pretty fast, and we plan to stick with it as the method for making sauce going forward.
Happy Gardening!
Wow, this will surely taste wonderful this winter when the cold wind starts “howling” (Halloween is coming), little play on words there. I have been enjoying the lettuce and tomato sandwiches this fall as the tomatoes are finally ripening, a little late but still works for me. One small line of lettuce never came up, not sure why but that is good ‘ol Mother Nature I guess. We wing it on what does well most years. The wares of gardening are great though! Happy canning!
Thanks! It has been a pretty good year for us despite the pests–insects and deer!
I love tomato and lettuce sandwiches! I predict we will have harvested about 150 pounds of tomatoes this year (not including the green ones Tracy will make jam from).
We will do some things differently next year to make harvesting a little easier; but that’s the point–live and learn each year!
Any fun gardening facts learned from your garden this year?
Cheers!
That sounds really easy and really good! I really like it when you don’t have to peel the tomatoes. And adding all that extra veg and herbs–I’m drooling over here! Nicely done Gordon and Tracy!
Thanks, Kristen. We love this method. I feel like we learn a little something useful each year. Everyone is so generous with their information and experiences; we rely heavily on great people and their blogs, and that’s one reason we like to share our experiences as well.
What’s your favorite technique for de-skinning tomatoes?
No real favorite method of de-skinning…just the tried and true blanching. I detest de-skinning vegetables though so I take the lazy method and just leave the skins on when I can! Of course if you can use a peeler (like on fruit or potatoes) that doesn’t bother me as much. But when I was preserving the peaches I used the blanching method vs peeling method and that was a life saver!
I’m wtih you. De-skinning is odious enough for me to look for alternatives whenever I can! But last time we did diced tomatoes Tracy and I teamed up; that always makes the task easier.
What a snap! I love the roasting method for tomatoes that will be going in the freezer. It looks like you guys have had a productive summer in the garden. That is wonderful!!
Thanks, Bekah. It has been a pretty good year for us. Some things we did the same as last year, and then we tried other things as well. Planting beans for drying was new to us, and we learned that we will need to plant a ton more if we want to put up enough for the whole winter. As it is, we will end up with a few quarts of dried kidney beans, black beans, and white baking beans. But our potatoes did great, we have 65 pounds of red, white and blue in the basement, and all sorts of tomatoes in one form or another. I’m always in awe of the bounty Nature provides us!
How about you? Any lessons learned from this years garden?
You must have a great garden space to have produced so much! That’s wonderful 🙂
This year I learned to accept when the birds and squirrels won (they ate every green bean shoot that tried to start) and make plans to be better prepared next year for that. And, I also learned to not plan all of our out of town trips in August when everything is going crazy in the garden! We should have tried to take some of our trips earlier to coincide with harvest a little better. But, those are easy lessons to remedy!
Good advice, indeed. We will also take different steps next year to reduce pest issues.