Canning Tomato Juice
There are 2 ways to get to the juicing point with tomatoes.
- You cut up a bunch of tomatoes and turn them into juice
- You just made spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce or salsa & you ended up with a gallon (or 2) of juice by blessed default.
#2 is me. I don’t take entire, gorgeous tomatoes and cook them into juice. Not there is anything wrong with doing that. It’s just that, as I see it, you are kinda wasting the rest of the tomato when you start with a whole tomato, cook it to mush, smash all the juice out of it & discard all the rest. (On the flip side, I’m sure the chickens would be happy.)
All the rest had some awesome potential. Really. That mushy, gloppy stuff you are left with could have been some darn good tomato-based products if you reversed the order.
Just make the sauces first. Catch all the juice that runs out of the tomatoes while you are attempting to get out all the seeds, peels and cores. Trust me, plenty of juice is going to flow.
Just put a giant mesh strainer over a 1 gallon pitcher. Over this gallon I do all my de-seeding, peeling and coring. It is inevitable that when I am pushing all those bitter seeds out, a bunch of juice runs out with them.
THEN I drop the remaining fleshy part of the tomato into my pot (behind the strainer in the picture above) to become something fabulous.
By de-juicing my tomatoes before I make sauces I cut my cooking time down to nothing. I don’t have to cook my sauce “until contents are reduced by half” also know as “all day.” I can cook my sauce until it is as thick as I want it to be and then I can go do something else. Since, much of the juice has already been removed, it doesn’t take too long to cook my spaghetti sauce.
But what about quantity? Do you get more juice if you juice the entire tomato?
Probably, umm, yeah – but….
After a summer of canning spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce and salsa I rounded the year with 50 quarts of tomato juice. And I never “juiced” one tomato – the entire 50 quarts were just the leftover juice from making all my other tomato-based, canned goods. That works for me!
I don’t see our family of 6 needing more than 50 quarts of tomato juice this year.
Here’s the recipe!
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Happy Canning!
-Candi
Ingredients
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Wash tomatoes. Remove cores and any bad spots. Quarter and simmer in heavy bottomed pot until soft (about 30 minutes). Juice tomatoes using a food mill, food processor or a wooden spoon and a strainer. The goal is to squash all the juice out of the flesh.
Strain juice to remove any peels, seeds or chunks.
Heat juice for 5 mintues at 190 degrees.
Add 2 tbsp lemon juice to each quart jar (1 tbsp for pints). Ladle hot liquid into hot jars. Leave 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rims & adjust lids. Process in boiling hot-water bath for 40 minutes for quarts (35 for pints).
Fun Variation: Add fresh herbs to you tomatoes during the last 5 mintues of cooking. You can also add seasonings to your taste: salt, spices, herbs, hot pepper sauce.
Disclaimer: Always follow directions specific to your equipment and elevation for canning. Dispose of any home canned goods that show signs of spoilage which can include: bulging lids, leaking, corrosion, cloudy, mushy, moldy foods or disagreeable odors.
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