No More RUNNY Sauce! I WISH I knew THIS when I started.

hi everybody welcome to living traditions homestead my name is sarah well as you can see we are in prime tomato harvesting season it is pretty crazy how many tomatoes our plants are producing but on the other hand we did plant almost 100 tomato plants so but hey this is exactly what we were hoping for exactly what we've been praying for a bumper crop of tomatoes because here on our homestead we use all of these tomatoes to can diced tomatoes tomato sauce tomato juice salsa and a lot of times barbecue sauce and ketchup so this bumper crop is going to be put to good use here this summer and recently i did a video showing how to can diced tomatoes so if that's something you're interested in make sure that you check that out but today i'm going to be making and canning both tomato sauce and tomato juice out of the same tomatoes this year i'm doing things a little bit differently than i've done in the past so i'm also excited to show you just how i've mixed it up this year to make things a little bit easier for me i'm hoping that you find this process very easy and effective now there are lots of ways that you can make tomato sauce and lots of amazing ways that you can make tomato juice some people blend all the seeds and the skins up and then boil it down on their stove for a while i'm not saying that my method is the best it's just what is working best for me this year next year it might be different last year it was a little different too so let's get started we have a lot of tomatoes to work with today now before we go though i do want to tell you that today i'm working with all slicing tomatoes i'm not working with any paste tomatoes there are really two types of tomatoes that you can grow well three if you count cherry but these big tomatoes you can grow slicing tomatoes like this which are usually used on sandwiches you can i use them for diced tomatoes uh they're very good for tomato juice because they have a lot of water in them they're very juicy but paste tomatoes are a different type of tomato they don't have as much juice they're a lot more just like tomato meat and that's great for making sauces because you don't have to boil out all of that water so it takes a lot less time but today because our abundance of tomatoes is the slicing type of tomatoes but i still need a lot more tomato sauce i'm going to be making tomato sauce out of slicing tomatoes and at the same time because they're so juicy i'm going to be harvesting some of that juice to then can tomato juice at the same time it's kind of interesting i really like doing this process because i feel like i'm like you know doing double duty at one time i'm just like really being efficient and using everything that we are producing so i don't know maybe you think the same way so let's get started we've got a lot of work to do but i am very excited to share with you the process that i'm using this year we're going to start off by coring all of these tomatoes today i'm working with two boxes of tomatoes yesterday morning i'm not even kidding you we harvested six boxes and two baskets of tomatoes so i have a lot of work coming up for me in the next few days but i love it so it's okay so these two boxes and maybe a partial other box is gonna fill my big roaster back here that's what i'm hoping for you might be able to hear in the background some strange noises while i have my pot on the stove heating up so it's making a little bit of noise we're going to be using that in just a little bit so i wanted to save time by getting that boiling so like i said we are going to be coring tomatoes tomatoes on the inside here have a core and it's it's kind of hard and white it doesn't break down well and so we're going to get rid of that it's also the stem part here so we're going to take that out i use a tomato corer you can see that here um it looks a lot like a watermelon baller but it has little teeth on it and it really helps to scoop out that core we're going to be giving the cores and the skins to the pigs they love it so we're just going to get started on doing that now these tomato corers i love you can get them on amazon you can probably get them other places too but if you'd like to learn more you can check those out in our amazon shop so i'm going to be filling up this bowl and a couple other bowls with tomatoes and then we'll get started skinning them okay here we go we're gonna skim these tomatoes i've got three big bowls full of the tomatoes we're going to take all the skins off of them the easiest way to do that is to put the tomatoes in boiling water keep them in there until they split and then put them in cold water or ice water to cool them down and stop them from cooking then the skins slip off so easily makes this just a breeze [Music] i put about eight or nine tomatoes in the water at once stir them around and really in no time they'll start to split i've found that those that are really ripe will split really quickly but if you've harvested them a little bit too early or if you haven't let them ripen up in the house long enough then sometimes it's it prevents the tomatoes from splitting really well so that's something to keep in mind you can see it didn't take very long at all and these tomatoes are already split putting them in the cold water i'm going to stir them around a little bit i'm gonna put the top back on here so i can get warm again while i process them over here the tomatoes cool down in the water really fast you can just take them out of the water and peel off the skin see how nicely that peels off and i'm just gonna put it in the bucket for the pigs i'm gonna do the same thing with the other seven that are waiting now a lot of people will dehydrate their tomato skins and then powder them and add them to their cooking and i think that is a fantastic idea you should definitely try that i have some digestive issues and the tomato skins don't agree with me so i don't do that process plus we give the tomato skins to the pigs and it turns into bacon the final step of this part of the process is to get the skinned tomatoes into the roaster now this is a nesco 18 quart roaster oven it can be used for lots of things but really it's a giant crock pot i absolutely love it because i do a lot of processing of tomatoes in large quantities if you don't have a nesco you can just use your crock pot on low it will do the same thing so i before i forget to tell you i put the heat on 250 degrees on my nesco roaster so i'm going to take these tomatoes if you are most comfortable using a cutting board go ahead but i'm going to at least quarter these and maybe i'll cut them into six pieces each i'll do all of the tomatoes the same way and then start cooking them down this process i normally do with our girls we have a system where all three of us work really well together one of the girls will core the tomatoes one of my other daughters will do the putting them in the hot water in the cold water and sometimes skinning and then i will be cutting up the tomatoes like this and sometimes depending on the time frame i might be doing the skinning and cutting up it just depends on how backed up one part of the process gets and so we can just whip through a couple boxes of tomatoes in no time it really is easier with multiple people and with lots of sets of hands so i'm going to keep doing this whole process until we get all of those tomatoes cored skinned cut up and put in the roaster and then we'll check back when it's all filled up well grace was available to help me with the rest of that process so we got that done in no time at all and now my nesco is just filled with tomatoes so i plugged it in and turned it on up to 250 degrees and i'm just gonna let this start cooking down for an hour or two the thing about these slicing tomatoes is that like i said before they're just filled with so much water they make a very runny tomato sauce actually it's about the consistency of tomato juice like v8 that you get from the store i'm gonna cook these down so that the water starts separating from the meat of the tomatoes that's why i didn't blend it that's why i kept the tomato pieces in really big chunks the water will start separating from the meat of the tomato in a couple of hours i'm going to come back and i'm going to start ladling off the juices that have separated from the tomatoes and i will save that and we'll can that as tomato juice so we're going to leave it just sit here for a couple of hours and come back and start separating it well it's been a little while let's check and see if there's been any developments or action in the nesco with the tomatoes it doesn't look a whole lot different but let me show you what is happening down inside here you can see if i put my ladle down in here that a lot of the water is starting to separate out from the tomato meats so i am going to actually be draining off a lot of this and putting it into jars and we'll keep that for tomato juice i'm going to collect the juice in a half gallon mason jar like this and i'll just keep using my ladle down in these little open pockets because the liquid will continue to fill up we'll just keep ladling off all of this liquid i'll come back to this every few hours maybe two hours maybe three depending on what i have going on during the day and i'll just keep ladling off more and more of the juices you can see here and then in the end we'll have tomato juice and tomato sauce as it cooks down more of the water and the juice will be released and we'll just keep taking more more of it off and in the end it'll be great because it's like it's like a two for one it's like a buy one get one it's kind of an awesome deal it's a wonderful thing because it can just stay here working its magic i can continue pulling off that liquid throughout the day and it allows me the freedom to go get other things done too and i don't have to worry about boiling down sauce on the the top of the stove this just seems really easy and nice for me so the other day i did this whole process but i was busy we have family in town and so i could start the tomatoes but i just didn't have time to do all of the canning but i thought hey that would be perfect i can save this in the refrigerator for a day or two and then bring it out and do a video for you all so now i have shown you how to get started and i already have the end product here to show you so i started off with the same amount of tomatoes as we have in the nesco today and i ended up throughout the day being able to ladle off one and a half gallons of liquid that we will can as tomato juice and the tomatoes then cooked down and ended up being almost a full stockpot of the basically cooked down tomatoes there's still a little bit of liquid on top but i'm okay with that so this is what i'm ending up with i'll be able to can one and a half gallons of tomato juice and then whatever this tomato sauce turns out to be now i want to talk with you a little bit about the tomato juice the tomato juice that i have here that i've pulled off the tomato mixture is going to be a lot thinner than if i would have just processed these tomatoes for juice in that situation i would take the skins off and i would run it through like a food mill type of machine and all of the pulp would still be there all of the juice would be there the seeds would be removed and obviously the skins and that turns into a wonderful tomato juice also but it's a lot thicker kevin really likes this thin tomato juice just as well as the thicker tomato juice so rather than getting rid of it and dumping it down i'm just gonna can it the thicker tomato juice we really like to add to soups stews chilies throughout the winter and this thinner juice it's more likely that we will drink it kevin absolutely loves it so i just wanted to show you guys what the end result is of this process just sped up now that we've removed all of this juice and cooked these tomatoes down the consistency is much thicker let me show that to you see see how thick that is now we're gonna blend this all up and turn it magically almost into sauce now in years past i have used an immersion blender like a stick blender and that's actually my preferred way to blend this all up it is so fast and very thorough however my stick blender just broke last week and walmart doesn't have it or walmart is out maybe they don't even carry it i don't know but i need to order another one so today i'm going to be using my blender it's a ninja blender it will work really well but i just wanted to let you know that either way works great this is going to go pretty quickly i like to use a big measuring cup to help scoop rather than a ladle because it just goes by quicker and i'm also pouring this into a heavy bottomed pot we're going to need to warm this up and boil it for a little bit to make sure it's hot enough before we go through the canning process and a big pot that is heavy bottomed really helps prevent the tomato sauce from sticking on the bottom of the pot [Music] there it's all blended up now we just need to turn on the heat i'm going to put that on like a medium high heat we're going to bring that up to a boil i'm going to stir it pretty often to make sure that still it doesn't stick to the bottom but once that starts boiling we can can it while the tomato sauce is heating up to a boil i'm also going to start prepping some of this tomato juice now when i when i ladled off a lot of that liquid some bits and some tomato seeds came with it so i'm actually going to strain this before we put it into a pot the pot will catch all of the juice and then it will be ready for us to heat that up too so i've just been storing this tomato juice in the refrigerator until i have time to can it i've mixed it up a little bit and now we're just going to pour it through this strainer and we'll catch all the bits and all of the tomato seeds so all right my tomato sauce is just about there i put my canning pot on the stove and got that heated up it's turned off right now but it's hot so it'll come up to a boil in a jiffy i brought out all my jars i made sure that they're clean and sanitized right now they are hot in preparation for the sauce to go in them but first we need to add a couple things to our jars the first thing that is required is citric acid you either need to use citric acid or bottled lemon juice to increase the acidity of your tomato sauce now that might seem weird because you think of tomatoes as being acidic but tomatoes really vary between tomato on how acidic they are and we need to level the playing field there and make sure that they're all acidic enough to be water bath canned so we are going to be adding one quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid per jar i'm using pint-sized jars that's just the best for us and our family is to canned tomato sauce and pint-sized jars you can count them in quart sized jars just use a half of a teaspoon of a citric acid so i'm going to go ahead and do that and then afterwards i'm going to add a half of a teaspoon of salt to each jar i am liking more and more already having salt in my tomato sauce that is just a personal preference you can completely leave it out and this year is the first year i've been adding salt in my canning i enjoy it but it's not required these are all set let's get ready to can okay i am all set i know that my canner fits 12 pint-sized jars so that's what i have ready here i also know that this is way more than 12 candy jars i'm not sure if i'm gonna have time to can all of this plus all of the juice so i'm just going to start off with 12 pints of the sauce and then move on to the juice so that i can show you what to do so i'm gonna be filling these pint-sized jars up we're gonna fill them up to one-half inch from the top you can measure to make sure that you're half inch from the top i am but after you've done this long enough you can just kind of eyeball it and figure that out but i want to encourage you beginners to use one of these measuring tools to make sure that you have the correct spacing so that is all finished i wiped off the rim did you see that's like automatic for me now i forgot to even explain it i wiped off the rim we're gonna put on a lid and a ring and screw it on there now you can either put this right into the canner while you do the rest of this or you can just put it aside and wait until you have them all done today i'm going to put them aside and wait until we have them all done so again we're going to start with our jar ladle that in we're gonna ladle it all the way up to half an inch above the top of the jar wipe off the rim so that it's nice and clean and it will make a perfect seal put on a new lid put on a ring and tighten it to finger tight not too tight or your jar could explode in the canner set it aside and do it all over again now that all of my jars are filled we can start loading the canner all 12 are in here so i turned the heat back on once this comes to a boil we're gonna set our timer for 35 minutes that's how long these need to process but actually because of our altitude i need to increase that by five minutes so we'll be processing ours for 40 minutes if you're not sure of your altitude you can search your city on wikipedia and it will tell you and then you can find online the altitude charts and you can see if you need to increase your processing time too well the timer has gone off for our canner so i'm going to turn the heat off and i'm actually going to remove the lid we're going to let it sit here for five minutes without the lid on and without the heat on and the reason we do this is to let it cool down and just settle down a little bit while it's still in the canning pot so that when we remove it the temperature difference isn't so great that it causes the liquid to rush out the top or siphon out of the top so in five minutes we'll come back and we'll unload the scanner in the meantime i have my juice over here at a boil we're gonna start canning these so that as soon as i take these sauce jars out i can put the juice jars in we'll bring the juice over but just in case i have some extra jars open i'm gonna put the sauce back on and heat that back up okay with the juice jars same as before there's a quarter teaspoon of citric acid and a half a teaspoon of salt in each one they're all clean sterile and hot we're going to fill these up to a half of an inch to the top of the jar we're going to wipe off the rim oh that's hot wipe off the rim put a brand new lid on there and a ring put it on finger tight set it aside and then keep going well all of those jars are filled it was 11 pints of juice and one pint of tomato sauce so now we're going to take the jars out of the canner and switch them with these and so then we'll have two batches of canning done and that is pretty [Music] awesome now in goes the juice again the juice and the sauce need to process for 35 minutes 40 for me because of our altitude then when it's finished take the lid off for five minutes and then we will finish our canning for the day [Music] well you guys this was such a good project for me to get done today and i'm so glad i was able to share with you how i'm making tomato sauce and salvaging the tomato juice that i ladled off so that these slicing tomatoes can still be made into fantastic sauce i hope you guys learned a bunch today make sure to share this on your social media so other people know that they can make a fantastic sauce out of regular slicing tomatoes and make some fabulous juice as well thanks so much for stopping by the homestead you guys take care and god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 787,658

Rating: 4.9152665 out of 5

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing

Id: cPni3Yu1Ivg

Length: 25min 48sec (1548 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 22 2020