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Along with making our own wine and sun dried tomatoes,  my family also cans fresh plum tomatoes every August. The canned tomatoes are used mostly for making tomatoe sauce. Canning your tomatoes produces a better tasting tomato sauce and, of course, saves you money over the long term (especially after you’ve owned the canning equipment for several years).
Tomato canning should be done outdoors and with a large group (you’ll want to set up stations to work efficiently). Pasta with tomato sauce is probably one of the most popular dishes made at home in the US, so you’ll definitely go through the jars you produce. Let’s get into the details:
We’ll start with a list of the equipment and supplies you’ll need :
-Â Â Ball Mason Jars (12×1L size)
-Â Â Bands with dome lids
-Â Â Extra large pot for boiling jars (buy the largest pot you can find; the ones available at canningpantry.com seem small, so shop around in your area and see if you can find pots that hold between 8-12 jars at a time, as it will make the process go a lot quicker)
-Â Â Electric Tomato Crusher
-Â Â Cast Iron Stove Burner
-Â Â Mason Jar handler (this is used to lift the boiling jar out of hot water)
-Â Â 3-4 sharp knives for cutting plum tomatoes
-Â Â 2-3 extra large stainless steal bowls
-Â Â 2-3 extra large ladles
-Â Â Lots of clean dish towels and old clothing (you’ll want to wear old clothing during the entire process)
-Â Â Plum tomatoes are ideal for making tomato sauce; my family usually purchases about 6 bushels from any one of the local fruit and vegetable markets in our area.
-Â Â 2-3 fresh basil leaves are needed for each mason jar, so you’ll want to have 8-10 bunches of basil available (grow your own beginning in the Spring so you don’t have to buy it!)
- Start by washing all of the plum tomatoes and laying them out on some cardboard covered by an old table cloth or two (clean of course)
- You’ll next need to core all of the tomatoes and cut into four small pieces. This is where a large group will come in handy; you should be able to get through six bushels of tomatoes in about two hours with four people cutting and coring.
- Take the cored and chopped tomato pieces and cook in an extra large pot for 30 minutes (remember you’re cooking the tomatoes without any other ingredient)
- Move the cooked pieces from the pot to your tomato crushing machine. This step is probably the most messy, requiring that you clean the machine’s filter every 15 minutes or so (the filet should catch the seeds and most of the tomato skin). You’ll need several extra large bowls to catch the crushed tomatoes coming out of the machine.
- Next, you’ll want to have your sterile mason jars lined up and ready to be filled with both crushed tomatoes and 2 basel leaves per jar.  Use the extra large ladles to fill the jars and try to be as neat as possible.
- After you’ve filled the jar, you’ll want to place a NEW lid and a ring top on each jar. You can re-use the metal ring tops, but the metal/plastic lids need to be new in order for a proper seal to take place.
- Tighten the lids and rings as securely as possible.
- Fill your extra large pot with water and set on the cast iron stove burner and bring water to a boil
- Place between 8-10 mason jars into the boiling water bath for approximately 45 minutes. You can manually drop the jars into the water with a jar handler but use caution.
- Remove the jars from with boiling water using the jar handler and several dish towels (here you will need two people, one who will remove and another who will grab the jar)
- After the jars have cooled make sure to check a few of them to see if the lids have formed a tight seal (you can do this by unscrewing the ring or band).
- You’ll want to store the jars in a cool dry place. You can label the jars with the date, if you wish. Stay tuned for a tomato sauce recipe! Note the above process will yield about 125 12 X 1L size jars (so it’s best to can with 2-3 families).
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We did almost the same thing this past weekend as we have for many labor day weekends for years. We make tomato sauce and picante sauce. You start the same way as the above story, but after cooking the tomatoes and running them through a colander you add in your onions, peppers and spices and then cook everything to cook down the sauce (getting out the water) and then put it into jars and waterbath when done. We grew what we canned, but since the tomatoes come off slowly, I put them in the freezer along with the peppers and onions I want to use. Over labor day we thaw it all out and cook it up. We ended up with 152 pints of picante sauce and 24 pints of tomato sauce. This is a years supply for us. Just a note: Granite black kettles work well for cooking the tomatoes and waterbathing the jars, they can also be used for picking in the garden, hauling water, using for waste, or many other uses. They come in many different sizes. Find them at your hardware store. Stainless steel kettles are the best if you can afford them. A hand colander will also work well for getting the “meat” out of the cooked tomatoes, and it gives you a wonderful upper arm workout. The tomato waste stays inside the colander and the meat gets squished out the holes. You place it over a pan or bucket and the juice falls out the holes. Once you can your own tomatoes, you will always can your own tomatoes. And messy is right, there is no way to keep clean when canning tomatoes. It’s alot easier than it looks or reads. And so healthy. I honestly would not know how to cook without our home canned sauces.