Putting Food By - Janet Greene [60]
Or (3) processing at 15 pounds pressure (250 F/121 C) because you live at high altitude that requires this adjustment (see Correcting for Altitude in Chapter 3).
And there’s always freezing (in Chapter 17, “Freezing Convenience Foods,”) in a space-saving form like sauce.
Some Random Notes
PFB has seen some odd and hair-raising things over the years where tomatoes are concerned.
County fairs always have rows of jars of tomatoes—whole fruit, cut-up plain, or done with special touches that just could be hazardous to your health. One interesting exhibit featured quart jars of routine cut tomatoes: seals intact, good-looking liquid, no dark gurry showing at the sealing rim (jars are automatically regarded as unacceptable if they are displayed with their screwbands still on), no extrusions, no tiny mold spots. But the seeds had tiny tails—they had sprouted, indicating that the processing had not been adequate to prevent germination, and that the storage was warm enough to encourage sprouting (which halted only because acidity prevented further growth). It was recommended that the contents be destroyed.
Sometimes we hear of tomatoes canned whole in a B–W Bath with boiling water used as the processing liquid. PFB regards this practice as courting grave trouble. Of course, if the tomatoes were treated like a low-acid vegetable and processed in a Pressure Canner at 10 psig, we would relax.
Is it feasible to buy respectable commercially canned tomato juice in economically large containers? Yes, if the tomatoes are the tasty plum type with very little juice of their own, and the batches are small (for small families).
Pressure-Processing for Tomatoes
It is easy to cite Pressure-processing as the alternative method for canning tomatoes safely at home. However, a sound and well-tested timetable—a timetable of the reasoned sort we all rely on now for canning other foods—will take a good while to establish.
Meanwhile, for the householder who feels secure only with tomatoes done in a Pressure Canner, we offer the following stopgap. First, though, five things:
1. Pressure-processing is NOT A CRUTCH. It DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU CAN SHORTCUT ANY STEP of good canning procedure—careful selection, sanitation, correct packing, maintaining pressure, accurate timing, ensuring seals, proper storage.
2. Nutrients in some degree and of course texture to a greater extent will suffer more than they do in a Boiling–Water Bath. The tender flesh of tomatoes will disintegrate more (unless a firming additive is included: see calcium hydroxide under Firming Agents in Chapter 5), and an excessive amount of juice is likely to separate from the tissues.
3. Independent food scientists around the country agree that 5 pounds pressure is TOO LOW to get the result desired from Pressure-processing plain tomatoes.
4. The processing times given below are for cut-up plain tomatoes ONLY. The times are not long enough to deal safely with a mixture of tomatoes and lower-acid vegetables like onions, celery, green peppers, or whatever.
5. The processing vessel used is a conventional Pressure Canner—NOT a pressure cooker, even though it might hold several pint jars. The much smaller size of the pressure cooker plays hob with any pressure timetable (for why, see “Canning Methods,” Chapter 6). And anyway, such a little saucepan-size batch of cut-up plain tomatoes would be better converted to Plain Sauce and done in the proper Boiling–Water Bath.
These points made, for Pressure-canning cut-up plain tomatoes: use Hot pack only. Use jars or plain cans (if necessary, exhausting the contents to a minimum of 170 F/77 C after packing). Vent the heated canner 7 minutes for medium-size kettles, 10 minutes for large ones. Time the processing after internal pressure of the canner has reached 10 pounds (240 F/ 116 C)—15 minutes for pint jars, 20 minutes for quarts, 15 minutes for No. 303 cans, 20 minutes for No. 401 cans. Complete seals if using bailed jars, cool naturally; remove cans, cool quickly in cold water.
Before tasting canned food with any low-acid