Closeup of pastes

Closeup of heirlooms

And more picked yesterday - still have to pick green tomatoes this weekend, going to be freezing early Monday morning

Is it safe to can these pastes

Sure it is. Nothing wrong with them.

Dave

Thanks, I figured since they were still shiny and firm they're OK though they may not all be fully ripe. I'll cut off the wrinkled ends.

But what about the heirlooms?

Cut them up and taste them if you wonder if they are going off. I bet they are fine. I think the dullness and wrinkling is from dehydration -- happens to mine, too. I still eat them when they are WAY wrinkly.

If they are a little underripe they will just taste like canned tomatoes from the store :).

I know I can taste them, just wondering if the dehydration might affect the pH? Safe to mix with the pastes (and of course citric acid to NCHFP specs)? I figured I'd can up some more sauce as well as plain whole or crushed tomatoes.

I don't get why you are even questioning that these couldn't be canned? You would seriously consider tossing these?

Don't read things into the guideline if that is what you are referring to/concerned about. There are no safety issues mentioned except with diseased or frost damaged tomatoes. These are neither. The guideline clearly states it is "quality" issue only otherwise.

Quality: Select only disease-free, preferably vine-ripened, firm fruit for canning.

Caution: Do not can tomatoes from dead or frost-killed vines.

The minimal shriveling in your photos is most likely caused by contact anyway - one tomato stacked/resting on another causes uneven air circulation. And they are 3x better looking than many of the tomatoes that get canned regularly.

If only totally perfect tomatoes got canned then 2/3 the annual tomato crop would be trashed.

Dave

Thanks Dave, just wanted to be sure. I shudder when I see what people sell as "canners" - IMHO, they're fit only for the compost bin.

I tried not to have them touching, but had them in cardboard flats lined with newspaper and I admit I didn't turn them regularly (which is why I had so many rot where they were putting pressure on 1 spot).

I figured this was a situation that wasn't considered by the NCHFP and just wanted to make sure. They're not vine-ripened (by this point just about everything pictured heaped up in the cardboard box had been picked very green - I'm surprised they ripened at all) and while not soft/squishy I wouldn't consider the heirlooms "firm" since they're so wrinkled. The pastes look much better, so I figured those were OK, just thought I'd ask about all of them.

I shudder when I see what people sell as "canners" - IMHO, they're fit only for the compost bin.

Then you probably wouldn't be comfortable in the kitchen with many of us old time canning folks. :) Literally tons of those "canners" tomatoes have been bought, sold and home canned for many decades with no problems.

The paring knife is a wonderful tool.

Dave

A bruise or a black spot of the skin (that comes off when you peel) is one thing, but I see split moldy leaking tomatoes being sold here - yuck! OK, I'll go so far as to cut a 1" or less diameter moldy spot out of a 1lb + beefsteak (and cut way around it!) but if it's oozing, it's chicken food or trash (no compost this year b/c of SWD).

But boy, these things are slippery! Decided to raw pack whole and core them right over the jar(s) so as not to lose too much juice, lost one and splat on the floor and all over. I know some of you have help but those that don't, how do you get everything prepped in short order?

Rinse them, cut out the black spots, core them over a bowl, then pour the juice into jar. We cut out just beyond the black, and make sure that none of the black is still in tomato. The wrinkles will not make a difference.

Practice add speed, after awhile you get in a routine and things go well. James preps everything and all I do is the jarring and canning. It works well for us, but for more years than not, I was the only one prepping and canning. He helped with the weeds after working 60+ hrs/wk.

Darn, I smell tomatoes! Left the canner on the burner to cool rather than move it off and risk tipping (and/or siphoning due to rapid decrease in pressure). All fine until the last 5 psi or so then I started smelling them. Left 1/2" HS per instructions. Oh well, I forgot to put vinegar in the water so at least the tomatoes/acid cleaned the canner again. Vent pipe getting black though. No condensation in the dial face this time (shorter processing time, though higher psi than meat).

Edited to add photo - just out of the canner, the one on the left seems to have siphoned, not boiling in the jar, neither is the other one in the front, the 3 in the back are boiling furiously and have solids pushed right up into the necks. You can see the one that siphoned has the solids at the bottom of the jar.

This post was edited by ajsmama on Sat, Oct 19, 13 at 22:04

One definitely siphoned - and it wasn't really boiling like the others when I took it out of the canner. Never sealed.

I don't know if I had the canner quite centered on the burner (1" smaller in dia than base of PC) so that jar may not have been sitting on a burner but I assumed that once the pressure built, the pressure/temp would have been the same throughout the PC?

The other 4 sealed but now that they've cooled and settled they really all have the same HS as the one I know siphoned. I did poke the bubble releaser around in all the jars, and the tomatoes were quite soft from blanching/peeling, I kind of squeezed most of them into the jars and pulled the peel off with the core, squished them down into their own juice.

I started the burner on High but turned down to 8 when I put the weight on, bumped it up a little to 8.25 when it hit 10psi so I could get it up to 15 psi - it took a long time for the pressure to start climbing, maybe b/c I had been using that burner to blanch the fruit (though kept turning it off and back on so it wasn't running continuously )? It seemed like the burner wasn't really getting hot at first, but it did glow red steadily once I vented and for the whole process so it wasn't cycling.

Gotta go back to colored water - I don't know why I'm getting siphoning - and if all the jars did it or just the one (on the far right)? Again, this was raw(ish) pack so maybe there's just more air even though I tried to release it?

It scares me to see that you have them on a wire rack instead of towels!

I can't help with the siphoning.

Why would a wire rack scare you? I cool my BWBed stuff on it all the time. First photo they were spaced well apart to cool, next photo they had been cooling a few hours so I placed them closer together for the picture so you could see HS looks the same in all of them.

It's a very sturdy rack and they're well back from the edge of the counter so no jumping to their doom ;-)

Wire racks are OK, but they do tend to allow the jars to tip if the jars are not placed exactly on the wires. Most people have used the towel method over the years, for PC or BWB. Several people have had the rack to buckle and move/toss the jars off.

Are you PC the tomatoes for practice? I've found that the raw pack needs a bit more HS than hot pack. As far as not sealing, I had 1 jar of apple juice that didn't seal (I caught in time), when I opened I found a very tiny hair like item, just enough to prevent sealing. I had wiped the rims down, but still missed that.

Learning to PC, takes awhile, so don't get discouraged. Even years after, sometimes we get some siphoning.

Wire racks aren't needed for any reason and only increase the risk of tipping and such so why use them? Just one more piece of equipment to include in the mess.

Same goes for moving a full canner off a burner. The risks and problems involved when doing far outweigh anything gained IMO.

The one jar on the left in your first pic is the only one that siphoned IMO. The rest of the jars are the results of raw packing - edited to add - it is caused by all the air remaining in the food itself that is forced out of the food into the jar during processing.

The odds with a single jar siphoning is the band wasn't screwed on properly - to the same degree - on the one jar that siphoned.

Dave

This post was edited by digdirt on Sun, Oct 20, 13 at 12:21

The jar on the left int he 1st pic is the jar on the right in the last. So all the jars that sealed, and had the solids pushed up into the necks, didn't siphon and all the extra HS is from the raw pack. Good. I wouldn't have used raw pack except that I wanted to get the canner preheating and I can only really use the front 2 burners of my stove, other one had the blanching water in it.

The more iffy tomatoes are being made into sauce today, so I can cut the spots/wrinkled parts off and just throw them in the roaster (or a roaster and a slow cooker - I'd rather put 2 liners in the DW than wash the 18qt by hand, and I probably only have 10 qts of ripe tomatoes left).

Wondering - I have bell and other sweet peppers, onions, but no mushrooms to make Spaghetti Sauce. I do have summer squash. I know yellow can be subbed for zukes in the Tomato and Zucchini recipe, but can I also put in onions and peppers, not to exceed the 3:1 ratio of tomatoes to low-acid veggies (by weight) given in that recipe?

I'd like to make more of a Spaghetti Sauce without Meat, but that doesn't have squash, has oil, and a shorter processing time so I think I'm being more conservative with the Zuke recipe, I can use garlic powder (even upon opening) if fresh is a problem, add oil, sugar, and herbs upon reheating since I had that bad experience with basil.