Today I decided to use up a few more of those tomatoes I froze whole last fall. Basic stewed tomatoes are quite simple, so that's what I chose. I used the recipe in my 2009 edition of the Ball Blue Book guide to preserving:
STEWED TOMATOES
4 quarts chopped, peeled cored tomatoes (about 24 large, or 5 pounds)
1 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green pepper
1 T. sugar
2 tsp. salt
Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan. Cover; cook 10 minutes, stirring to prevent sticking. Ladle hot vegetables into hot jars, leaving 1-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Adjust 2-piece caps. Process pints 15 minutes, quarts 20 minutes, at 10 pounds pressure in a steam-pressure canner.
Yields about 7 pints or 3 quarts.
The first step I had to take, though, was to clean my oven a bit: last evening a baked potato exploded in the oven and left a mess. It had dried up quite well, though, and most of it I could sweep out with a whisk broom, or vacuum up with a hand-held vacuum.
Next, I brought in a couple bags of frozen tomatoes, warmed them up slightly in some barely-warm water in the sink, peeled them easily with my fingers, and cut them up into smaller pieces. I let the tomatoes cook for about 20 minutes, because they were still frozen and the recipe had not allowed for that.
Earlier this month I had chopped a few green peppers and stashed them in my freezer, so I used some of those. But I decided to dice them up smaller with my beloved Pampered Chef food chopper.
Diced onions were in my freezer since last summer, so I only needed to dice the celery.
I also made sure I had 8 pint jars washed and the rings and lids soaking in hot water. I kept the jars hot in the oven. After years of having them topple over on the oven rack, it finally occurred to me in the fairly recent past to set them on a cooky sheet. So much better!
After the tomatoes had heated through, I added the other ingredients and let it all cook for at least 15 minutes. After all, the peppers and onions were frozen, too.
Next, I filled the jars. I had 8 ready, just in case, but I only ended up with 5 1/2 pints. An inch of headspace seems like a lot, but that's what the recipe said, so that's what I did.
After processing them for 15 minutes at 13 pounds of pressure (adjusted for altitude and pressure canner quirks), I ate lunch while waiting for the canner to cool off and the pressure to drop. Here is the finished product on the counter.
The entire process only took about two hours, so I had time for a few other projects before the day was over. It will be nice to have some home-canned stewed tomatoes on the pantry shelf. I don't use them often, but I will be glad they are there when I need some.
