How to Bottle Tomatoes when Cheap and in Season! – Make Fresh Pureed Bottled Tomato Sauce – Use in Recipes
How to Bottle Tomatoes when Cheap and in Season! – Make Fresh Pureed Bottled Tomato Sauce – Use in Recipes
This is the easiest recipe under the sun. Saves you from spending a fortune when tomatoes are out of season! No need to peel and core tomatoes – They will disintegrate on pureeing and your colon will thank you for the fiber! The secret is in the skin that gives it the lovely red colour!
In this example I’ve used a 4.5 kg box of ripe red tomatoes. If you can get the Italian /Jam oval shaped tomatoes even better as they are best for Italian dishes but the ordinary one’s will do just fine too. It is so easy that there really is no need for a recipe at all! So here it is.
What I do, is get a large 5 liter microsafe bowl and fill it up with pre-washed whole ripe red tomatoes (with skins and cores intact). Press down on it if you like to squash it so you can fit more into bowl.
Over the top just sprinkle some sugar and salt to taste. Do not over do it. You can add more to taste later.
Push down and cover with dinner plate and cook on high in microwave oven until really soft enough to puree with stick blender. When softened and before turning on stick blender, press them down with stick blender, squashing tomatoes, which makes it easier on the machine and puree them, adding a little more salt and sugar to taste.
Just squash them all in and sprinkle some salt (I like sprinkling coarse salt) and some sugar. Press down and cover with a dinner plate so that they can steam and cook in their own juices
Have clean bottles ready and bring sauce to boil. If bottles are cold be careful as they will crack if adding hot tomato sauce too quickly, so add gradually. Seal bottle quickly once done. It will form a vacuum on cooling down which will preserve it.
Some bottles they are selling today come with weak clips / clamps which do not seal – In this case fill up a large jar of water and place it on top as a weight to compress the lids down on their rubber rings, until jar and contents have completely cooled down.
Once opened, store in refrigerator. – Enjoy!
Tomatoes cooked whole – Skins will disintegrate adding to that lovely red color
Puree with hand held stick blender