Preserving Tomatoes

It seems like tomatoes might be the most common plant in backyard gardens. They’re a classic, the fruit is versatile, and they’re pretty easy to grow. The biggest difficulty I have with growing tomatoes is choosing recipes once they start turning red!

This year, we tried starting most of garden from seed. I always bought seedlings in the past so it was a bit of a learning curve, and we ended up with a mix of from-seed plants and store-bought seedlings in several varieties.

This year, we are growing

• cherry tomatoes (store-bought)

• grape tomatoes (store-bought)

• Roma tomatoes (from seed)

• Lemon Boy (store-bought)

• Sandwich slicers (store-bought)

• celebration (from seed)

Another learning-curve for us this year is pruning - check out our post all about this maintenance tip here - which increased our fruit production. Needless to say, we have a bounty of tomatoes from our modest garden this year!

Gorgeous sweet tomatoes

Since I’ve been growing tomatoes on and off for the past 8 years, I’ve collected my fair share of recipes for freezing and canning. I’ve made modifications to some, made others word-for-word, and have loved all!

Spicy Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

This one is easy and a great way to preserve extra cherry tomatoes - and requires no canning!

• cherry tomatoes (as many or as few as you’d like!)

• salt

• pepper

• olive oil

• chili pepper

• red chili flakes

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. Wash tomatoes, slice in half, place in a mixing bowl. Add olive oil, salt, pepper, chili pepper and flakes. Mix well. Lay on the baking sheet (I preferred cut-side-up but you do you). Place in oven for 1.5 hours. For the next 30 minutes, I bumped the temperature up to 325 degrees to caramelize the tomatoes. Keep and eye on the tomatoes to make sure they are drying out and not burning. They should have little moisture. Let them cool, then add to a freezer-safe container. Store in the freezer for 6 months.

Spicy Thai Cherry Tomatoes

We’re also growing Thai hot peppers this year and they were perfect for this recipe! It’s so simple and no canning required! Bonus: when the tomatoes are gone, you can use the marinade to punch up your rice and pho. Recipe from https://www.yummly.com/recipe/Pickled-Cherry-Tomatoes-_Thai-Style_-1680894

Roasted Habanero Salsa

Soria and Heckert family-approved! It has the perfect spice level and a roasted flavor from the smoked paprika… it’s so good. I’ve made this recipe a few times and and have always forgotten the types and number of peppers - this year, I added two green bell peppers, two jalapeños, one habanero and got 11 pints out of the batch. Next year’s note: add one more jalapeño and one more habanero! Recipe from https://relishingit.com/2013/09/18/perfect-canned-summer-salsa/

Sun-Dried Tomatoes in Olive Oil

Another great non-canning recipe. The first time I made this recipe as several years ago and I ended up making 4 jars just for myself - I was addicted! I couldn’t wait to make it again this year and it’s nearly gone already so I’ll be making another batch soon. This recipe came from https://www.chilipeppermadness.com/preserving-chili-peppers/how-to-make-sun-dried-tomatoes/

Rustic Pasta Sauce

Searching for a pasta sauce recipe is hard! It either takes a lot of effort for a small two-pint yield, requires too many pounds of tomatoes, or requires peeling and seeding tomatoes. I do not like peeling and seeding tomatoes, hence the “rustic”.

Adapted from https://www.mydarlingvegan.com/canned-tomato-sauce/

• 20 lbs tomatoes

• 8 cloves garlic

• 1 onion

• 2 tbs salt

• 1 tbs oregano

• 1/2 tbs pepper

Wash tomatoes. Remove core and blossom ends, and cut off any spots on the skin. Roughly chop tomatoes, placing pieces in a sieve over a bowl to drain off excess liquids. I put some pressure on the pieces to help remove liquid. Drop into large non-reactive pot. Chop onions and garlic, sautéed. Add tomatoes and cook on the stovetop on medium-high heat. Add salt, pepper, and oregano. Keep and eye on the pot and stir as needed. It’ll stick to the bottom of the pot. Started with 8 quarts of tomatoes - after an hour, it reduced to 6 quarts and was still pretty watery. It had reduced to 4 quarts after simmering for two hours. (It could have gone longer but I was tired of being in the kitchen.) While the sauce is simmering, fill a large pot with water, add quart jars, and heat just before boil to sanitize. When sauce is done cooking, remove jars, add tablespoon of citric acid or bottled lemon juice, ladle sauce into jars, wipe rim, add lid and band to fingertip tight, and place in water bath canner. Process for 40 minutes then remove to cool and enjoy the sweet sweet sound of lids popping.