Home Canned Convenience

I won't give a recipe for spaghetti sauce here, because everybody has their own favorite for that. Have you ever thought, "wouldn't it be nice to have the taste of my homemade spaghetti sauce, with the convenience of a canned spaghetti sauce?" Well then, here are the canning instructions.

OK, I admit that canning spaghetti sauce isn't as convenient as picking up a jar at the store, but make a big batch once, and you can enjoy convenience for several meals. You can even include the mushrooms or ground meat if you want.


To can spaghetti sauce, leave 1 inch headspace and process using the pressure canner method. If it does not have meat, then process pints for 20 minutes or quarts for 25 minutes. If you want to include browned crumbled sausage or hamburger, then process pints for 60 minutes or quarts for 70 minutes.

If by chance you don't have a favorite spaghetti sauce recipe, then something like the Mrs. Wages mixes makes it easy to turn your gardens tomatoes into home canned convienience.



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Canning Stewed Tomatoes

Personally, I use a lot of stewed tomatoes. I eat them as a side dish. I serve them on macaroni. I add them to chili.I add them to spaghetti sauce. I make a stew out of stewed tomatoes, black beans, and corn.

A nice feature is that you can have variety just by changing the spices. Add hot peppers and cumin and you have a batch of Mexican style stewed tomatoes. Add oregano and rosemary and you have a batch of Italian style stewed tomatoes.

I use enough of them that it is worthwhile gardening and owning a pressure canner, just to save on stewed tomatoes.


You can add celery to this recipe, or replace the bell pepper with celery.

Stewed Tomatoes (makes 3 quarts or 6 pints)

4 quarts coursely chopped tomatoes
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 tsp basil
2 tsp thyme
2 tsp canning salt (optional)
2 Tbs sugar

Combine all ingredients, and cook until soft. Fill hot jars, leaving one inch headspace. Add lids and process with the pressure canner method. Process pints for 15 minutes, quarts for 20 minutes. For altitudes below 1,000 feet use 10 pounds pressure. Above 1,000 feet use 15 pounds pressure.
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Successfully Canning Tomato Sauce

Since my Mother's tomato sauce always separated, I grew up wondering how commercially canned tomato sauce was so perfectly homogeneous. What was their secret?

Considering that my best guesses were way off mark, it is a good thing that we have books to educate us. My best lesson in preventing separation, came form the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I can't figure out why the Ball Blue Book doesn't pass this advice on.


Any way, to understand separation, lets talk about the way my mother did it. She would quarter a huge kettle full of tomatoes, then put it on the stove to cook. The whole time that she was standing there quartering tomatoes, the air was interacting with an enzyme in the tomatoes and breaking down the pectin in the tomatoes.

In commercial production, the whole tomatoes are flash heated. The heat deactivates this enzyme. At this point, it doesn't matter if the insides of the tomato get exposed to air, because the enzyme has already been deactivated.

Since we don't have the equipment to flash heat foods at home, does this mean that there is no hope for home canned tomato sauce? Well, I can't promise perfect tomato sauce, but I can offer advice to increase your chances.

Quarter just a few tomatoes, turn the heat on and smash them with a potato masher. Quarter a few more, add them to the pot, and smash them too. Stir the pot every time you add more tomatoes. Since you only cut a few tomatoes at a time, the cut surface is only exposed to air for a very short time before it gets heated.

When you have them all cut up simmer your tomatoes for about 5 minutes, then run them through your food mill.
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