As you can probably guess from the title, it will be a week of canning posts here at The Local Cook! On Labor Day I had a marathon canning session. I made basic tomato sauce, pizza sauce, salsa, bruschetta preserve, and zucchini relish.
My Dad let me have the excess tomatoes from his garden. It’s amazing to me how many go to waste. Nothing against my Dad, it’s just that I imagine around this time of year people are sick of gardening and I am picturing thousands of tomatoes rotting around the nation.
I was very tempted not to peel the tomatoes for the tomato recipes. After doing some reading, however, I decided that I would go ahead and peel them as directed by the recipes. As they did not call for seeding, I did not seed the tomatoes.
The process for peeling the tomatoes was relatively painless. At first I used a basket to lower the tomatoes into a pot of boiling water, waited until the skins started to come off (about 1-2 minutes), then took the pot and dumped them into a waiting pot of cold water. Eventually I figured out it was easier to just drop the tomatoes one by one into the boiling water and fish them out with a strainer. Oh, and I dug out the core/stem part with my fingernails. Much more efficient than wielding a knife.
Check back this week to see the recipes!
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This tip also shared at Tuesday Garden Party and Works for Me Wednesday
So jealous of your tomatoes! Mine are so slow to come on and ripen!
I’ve done this and it really does work! I was skeptical before I tried it, but it was so easy! Thanks for sharing!
I’ve read about this method of peeling tomatoes, but never tried it myself. Glad to hear that it was really easy!
I wish I could grow tomatoes. We tried last year, on the south side of our coastal northern California home, but we only got a few tiny red ones. You are lucky. We hope to retire somewhere warmer to be able to grow them.
I’m sure there are other benefits to living in northern California. 🙂
Thanks for linking this informative post at the Tuesday Garden Party! I’m usually doing a lot of this at this time of year, but the tomatoes aren’t cooperating. 😉