Canning 2024

[bethzaring]

In the past few days I canned 6 1/2 pints of chokecherry jelly and 15 pints of sweet corn. DH has his own garden by his shop, about 1/4 of a mile from the house. His plot is right on an acequia so he has unlimited water to grow corn.

 

[blissful]

We will end up canning tomatoes later, near 9:30 pm. We didn't have quite enough tomatoes so he went to grocery and brought back 4 bags of tomatoes for $4, reduced produce. That filled the roaster and another 4 qts which is all boiling down. The jars are ready. Probably about 12 qts.

 

[blissful]

So far we're waterbath canning one batch of ketchup, wide mouth pint jars, tattler lids, from paste. 14 fit in the canner, 1 will have to wait until the next batch.

 

[bethzaring]

I just pressure canned 14 pints of pizza sauce with sausage. This is all the tomato products I have for this season. Our growing season keeps getting shorter. We expect our first freeze tonight so I will put blankets on some tomato plants, to at least keep us in fresh salsa for a few weeks. The fresh tomatoes you see are what have been collected the past few weeks. I already had 3 quarts of prepared sauce in the freezer to add.

 

[blissful]

Awesome @bethzaring

We only made 3 batches of thick tomato sauce this year. 36 quart jars, not a great year for tomatoes.

We finished the ketchup, 30 pint jars but one blew out the bottom, so 29. I'll find out tomorrow if they all sealed or not. Labels are made.

 

[bethzaring]

Awesome @bethzaring

We only made 3 batches of thick tomato sauce this year. 36 quart jars, not a great year for tomatoes.

We finished the ketchup, 30 pint jars but one blew out the bottom, so 29. I'll find out tomorrow if they all sealed or not. Labels are made.

One of the jars in the second round canning the pizza sauce, didn't seal, so I will be making pizza tomorrow. It won't take the full pint so I will freeze the leftover sauce in the pint jar.

 

[blissful]

We stuck the labels on the ketchup this morning. 29 jars, 1 didn't seal. That one goes in the fridge. The rest go in the pantry.
From the last time I made ketchup we average using 16 oz every 12 days. So the current batch should last almost 1 year.

 

[taxlady]

When I have made ketchup. it has gotten used up a lot faster than the store bought stuff does. Well, I don't much care for the store bought stuff. The homemade stuff is sooooo much better that I actually use it.

 

[blissful]

When I have made ketchup. it has gotten used up a lot faster than the store bought stuff does. Well, I don't much care for the store bought stuff. The homemade stuff is sooooo much better that I actually use it.

We use it for part of the recipe for stir fry sauce and mostly for air fried potatoes, either alone or with balsamic vinegar added.

 

[pepperhead212]

This isn't for canning, but for freezing. Yesterday, I cleaned up all of the tomatoes I had, and ground them up, and cooked them down slowly, in a NS wok. It was almost 192 oz (6 qts), and I had to keep about 2 qts in a bowl, until it had boiled down some. It eventually cooked down to just under 50 oz. I'll freeze it in 1 and 2 oz portions - maybe a few larger.
Just under 192 oz of ground up tomatoes, cooked down to just under 50 oz of paste, to be frozen. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Here's the gold cherries that I ground up, that lightened this a little, along with a few other larger yellow ones, but most are red ones.
about 24 oz of Sunsugar and Zluta Golda, ready to blend - one of 8 batches being cooked down to tomato paste. by pepperhead212, on Flickr

 

[dragnlaw]

I'm curious pepper - how long did it take to boil it down to that paste?

 

[pepperhead212]

dragn, I don't know exactly how long, but it started yesterday, and finished today, and probably over 24 hrs. I cooked it on an induction burner, and had it sort of foaming up on 3, so I turned it to 2, and occasionally would stir it with a silicone spatula as I was nearby, but it never formed any layer on the bottom. Eventually, it started getting thicker (fortunately, I have a very large splatter cover for this!), so I turned it to 1, and about midnight I turned it off, put the glass cover on, and turned it back on about 7 am (still warm then - I wasn't worried about leaving concentrated tomatoes out this long, with the acid in them), and this evening, I turned it up to 5, and stirred it several minutes, like I would when cooking down a chile paste, and eventually got it thick enough.

I have made paste much faster, by adding some dried tomatoes to the liquefied tomatoes, to thicken them much more to start out.

 

[dragnlaw]

Thanks pepper. Was just curious, figured it would be at least 24 hours, if not more.

 

[Kathleen]

I was late to canning this year. Like before, I put up multiple jars of salsa, some pickles, apple butter, and apple sauce. New for this year, are pickled peppers, 14 Day Pickles (currently on day 12), chunky dills, and apple-scrap jelly.

I did not make vinegar because I barely use what it would make. So I took my scraps and cores (minus seeds) and boiled them until all was mush. Then ran it through multiple layers of cheesecloth. Using the juice, I made apple jelly. It's got a great flavor since I used a lot of various apples in the apple sauce and butter. However, I think I overcooked it as it is very stiff once refrigerated. However, the color, aroma, and taste are amazing.

Apple scraps are in the far pot.

Apple-scrap jelly

Dill Chunks

Pickled Peppers

 

[bethzaring]

We had our first fall freeze one month later than average. Which is great due to our short growing season, but it has meant I was harvesting tomatoes far longer than usual. I had so many brought in that I needed to do one last canning session so they would not go bad. I canned a V-8 juice and got 10 pints and 3 quarts. I always feel great when I can utilize my home grown celery, onions, garlic, green peppers, parsley....for a product so delicious. I mainly used this juice as a base for winter soups.

 

[GinnyPNW]

Looks great!! Thanks for sharing!

 

[dragnlaw]

Wow... would take me forever now to munch my way thru that! Looks good Kathleen, well done!

 

[Kathleen]

Thanks. My last canning was completed today. I've been trying to make really good 14-day pickles for a couple of years. My mother and grandmother often felt that a list of ingredients was a "recipe." My first attempts were disasters. Attempts 1 and 2 were mushy. Attempt 3 was simply worrisome. I felt that it had spoiled in some horrible way. This attempt seems good so far. The pickles were firm when I packed them and smelled wonderful. In tasting the syrup, it seemed a little underwhelming on the spicy taste. I added 1/4 a teaspoon of spices to each jar and canned them up. And....a miracle. I believe all jars sealed.

No worries, Dragn. We will be sharing a lot of our items along with gifting or taking things such as salsa over the holidays. We wouldn't be able to munch through everything either. I'm posting pictures of our 14-day pickles, salsa, apple sauce, and apple butter.

Slightly off-topic, but I love, love, love, love, love my steam canner.

What has others canned????

 

[pepperhead212]

I was going to do the green tomato pickling today, but got too busy with the hydroponics. Maybe if I do it tomorrow, the smell of the pickling will ward off some of the varmints at the front door!

Seriously though, I'll probably wait until Friday, because it is supposed to be much cooler, while tomorrow is possibly a record breaking high for Halloween! Not a good day for wearing a costume.

 

[pepperhead212]

3 days ago I harvested the last of the tomatoes, with over 4 quarts of green ones. A few ripened, or at least started to, but I also pickled some chunks of onion with them - a favorite thing of mine in escabeche, too. I cut up 2 medium onions into pieces, so there was a half of an onion per jar, plus 2 small cloves of garlic lightly smashed, 2 full sized green Thai dragons (those things are still producing!), 1½ tb each of yellow mustard seed and Indian coriander seed, and 1 tb each cumin seeds and black peppercorns, plus a half tsp of calcium chloride "crisp". I tried to distribute the larger tomatoes (cut into halves or quarters) evenly, along with the smaller ones, and weighed the onions, then spread those evenly between the jars, before pouring in the brine (4 c each water and white vinegar, with 4 tb plus 2 tsp each sugar and pickling salt), then working the bubbles out, topping , cleaning the jar rim, and putting the sterilized top on. This was boiled 15 minutes, and now will rest a week, before sampling.

UD - almost forgot the 2 bay leaves per jar, I added with the spices. Remembered them when I saw the tray of them on the back porch, where I got them from!
And here is the last of the green tomatoes, a heaping 4 qt bowl. Most of these will become pickles. 10-29 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

4 quarts of pickled green tomatoes, last tomatoes from the vines of the '24 season. 11-1 by pepperhead212, on Flickr