Home canned tomatoes
April 06, 2010
When I was a child, there was always one day, near the end of August,
when we would drive to my uncle’s farm to pick tomatoes for home
canning. This was before mechanical harvesting, and there would always
be tomatoes left in the field after the last picking for the local tomato
canning cooperative that my grandfather belonged to since the 1940s.
We would go there in the late afternoon, when the heat of the sun was
less fierce, and fill 2 or 3 crates of tomatoes, emerging from the fields
with legs and hands stained green and our sandals all dusty. Early next
morning, mum would wake us up, tell us to put on some old clothes
and fix ourselves a quick breakfast before joining her and dad who
would already be at work under the shade of the lime tree in front of
the house. Dad was boiling large pots of water in which he would dump
tomatoes, before quickly scooping them out and cooling them in a
bucket of cold water. My brother and I would peel the tomatoes in our
hands – this was great fun at first, sliding the tomatoes out of their
skins with a satisfying slurping noise, but after the hundredth tomato,
the novelty soon wore off. Mum cored the tomatoes and placed them
in large glass canning jars with some tomato juice or water, which would
be sterilized, ten at a time, in a metal sterilizer filled with water.
We would also make tomato puree by crushing peeled tomatoes in a
moulinette. This would be filled into litre sized beer or cider bottles saved
during the year for this exact purpose. If there were any tomatoes left,
and enough courgettes and aubergines from the garden, we would also
make ratatouille. All the jars and bottles would then join the jars of cherries,
peaches, apricot and green beans prepared earlier in the summer. In the
winter we would be enjoying the healthy flavours of summer. Nothing ever
tastes as good as when you have prepared it yourself.
I doubt many people still preserve tomatoes this way. I enjoy making jams
but I have never taken the time to can fruits and vegetables. The only
exception is the prepared sauces I freeze in October when I pick the last
tomatoes before the first frost.
Even if I bought fresh tomatoes for canning at home, time and cost are
big dissuaders especially when I can find a wide range of very affordable
canned tomatoes or purée on the supermarket shelves. Have you
compared the price of a can of wholepeel to that of a kilo of good ripe
tomatoes? And who knows how long the tomatoes have been on the
supermarket shelf? On the other hand, those canned tomatoes were
picked less than 24 hours after harvesting and have therefore kept all
their vitamins and antioxidants and great taste so I never hesitate
to use them.
Is anyone still preserving their own tomatoes?
Olive
Posted: April 06 2010 by admin | Comments [1]
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