Ok not sure I understand the problem correctly but the first question would be what exactly are you using to do the straining part? The tool used makes a big difference in how you do it. A tomato press?

Second, it depends on if you want actual sauce or just tomato juice?

Normally with frozen tomatoes I just let them thaw in a collandar so much of the water drains as they thaw. Then run them through the tomato press to remove skins, seeds, and cores, then cook down the resulting juice in to sauce. Then can.

Dave

Will never make any tomato product again except Annie's salsa (but of course will still grow and eat fresh tomatoes).

This morning's disaster was epic and actually too bad to be described. Am cooking remaining tomatoes now, will freeze sauce when ready.

I don't yet have a tomato press or a food mill. When I make my tomato sauce from frozen tomatoes, I take them out of the freezer and place the bags in the sink for a while. Once they are able to be separated but still frozen - I run them under water to remove the skins. I stack them high in large bowls to thaw. The next day, the tomatoes are thawed, and the bowls are filled with the water/juice that drained off the frozen tomatoes. The water/juice is set aside. I either crush the thawed tomatoes into a blender, or into the sauce pot. It depends how chunky a sauce I'm looking for at the end. If I want to remove the seeds, I run the blended tomatoes through a colander. Sometimes, if I'm wanting other ingredients... chunky tomatoes, roasted eggplant, etc... I cook the tomatoes for a while, blend and sieve what I want smooth (setting some chunks aside if I choose,) then finish the cooking adding the extra ingredients at the right time.

While the sauce is cooking/reducing, I use the water/juice that was set aside to make a minestrone soup. BTW... I do this in winter when the house is cold. I look at all my canned goods in the pantry and toss whatever beans and veggies are getting closest to their expiration date into the soup. I do the same with the freezer - whether it's stuff from the garden that needs to be used soon, or store-bought and soonest to expire, into the minestrone it goes. The tomato water/juice gives a fantastic brightness to the minestrone and nothing goes to waste.

Keep in mind that I don't yet can, so all of this is frozen into appropriate containers. Space is saved, pantry and freezer is cleaned and consolidated, and another season of sauce and soup is ready.

But as Dave mentions, I often wish I had a press, it sure would save steps, work, mess, and time. I keep threatening to somehow get a Roma... but alas... maybe soon...

I've had an old but serviceable Squeezo press for at least 10 years as well as one of the cone and pestle presses and one of those saucepans that has a built in handle that turns a blade to crush stuff.

It isn't the equipment that is the problem, it's me.I should have thought it out and done it the way you do rgreen, but instead I put a pot full of tomatoes on the stove to heat and thaw. They were watery so I did not realize that some of the tomato pieces would settle to the bottom. And burn.

Thank goodness there were plenty of tomatoes left, I ended up with 14 quarts which I froze.

I plan to can my mini butternut squash in a couple of weeks and I am going to take my time and think through each step before doing it. Experience is a hard teacher.

Lucille, I wish I were closer, I'd come over and we'd be canning buddies, it's so much more fun with company than canning alone.

I have one of those old Squeezo presses, I love it. So much that I bought a second one at the on-line auction, just to make sure I have back up! It's great for apple sauce too.

Sorry about the tomatoes, but if it helps, it happens to all of us, I think. I did learn from my Grandma, and then I "un-learned" some of the things she taught me, updating my recipes and methods when it was necessary.

Good luck on that squash. My butternut seeds just went into the ground about a month ago here in Michigan, it'll be a couple of months before those are ready here. I do have blossoms on the tomatoes, though, and I'm down to three jars of salsa, so just in the nick of time...

Annie