Is this the recipe you are referring to? If not would you please link to it?

Multi-Use Tomato Sauce

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
10 plum tomatoes -- (about 2 1/2 lbs./1 kg)
10 large tomatoes -- peeled and chopped (about 4 lbs./2 kg)
4 large garlic cloves -- minced
2 large stalks celery -- chopped
2 medium carrots -- chopped
1 large onion -- chopped
1 large zucchini -- chopped
1 large sweet green pepper -- chopped
1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes -- (125 mL)
2/3 cup dry red wine -- (150 mL)
1/2 cup red wine vinegar (5% strength or more) -- (125 mL)
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon pickling salt -- (15 mL)
2 teaspoons dried oregano -- (10 mL)
2 teaspoons dried basil -- (10 mL)
1 teaspoon granulated sugar -- (5 mL) (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon -- (2 mL) (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper -- (2 mL)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley -- (50 mL)

Combine tomatoes, celery, garlic, onion, zucchini and green pepper in a very large non-reactive pan. Add 1 cup (250 mL) water. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat and boil gently, covered, for 25 minutes or until mixture begins to thicken, stirring occasionally.

Soak sun-dried tomatoes in boiling water until softened. Drain and dice. Add to sauce with wine, vinegar, bay leaves, salt, oregano, basil, sugar, cinamon and pepper. Continue to boil gently until desired consistency, stirring frequently. Discard bay leaves and stir in parsley.

Remove hot jars from canner and ladle sauce into jars to within 1/2 inch (1 cm) of rim (head space). Process in a BWB 35 minutes for pint (500 mL) jars and 40 minutes for quart (1 L) jars.

Yield:"12 cups"

If so then you are trying to make some major changes in the recipe that will affect flavor and could affect the safety margin. Have you tried it as written?

Yes you can leave out the celery but no you cannot add extra carrots. You can only sub like for like.

You can pressure can it if you wish but would have to use the same time as given in the recipe. We can't guesstimate processing times. Why do you want to PC it?

Freezing does affect flavor marginally but IMO is worth the time saving.

You would be changing the density if you scrape and drain them first as you would be adding more tomatoes than called for to bring it up to weight. Normally you weigh and freeze and then use all when thawed.

The recipe doesn't call for deseeding or draining either. If you don't want the seeds then remove them before freezing but use the number of fruit, not the weight as it will be less due to the loss weight of the seeds and if you tried to increase it to the weight level you'd be increasing the density.

Same goes for roasting them. You can roast them but you can't use oil to do it and then you either use all the weight measurement, undrained or you go by number, not weight to retain the density.

So rather than trying to make all these changes that can cause safety issues and will definitely affect the flavor why not just use one of the roasted tomato tomato sauce recipes instead?

Dave

Hi Dave,

Yes, that's the recipe I was referring to. Thanks for the responses.

As for why pressure canning... I was hoping to be more efficient as I would be at least doubling the recipe and canning pints. Since my pressure cooker holds 19 pints, I could do them all at once instead of multiple water bath batches. I was actually surprised that this wasn't pressure canned since it has quite a bit of less acidic veggies in it.

Good to know I can leave out the celery. I love that this recipe has carrots in it to begin with because I think they impart a wonderful natural sweetness. So I'll just leave out the celery. Just for informational purposes, what would be a "like" for celery anyway?

I will definitely make it as written. As I haven't frozen raw tomatoes before I wasn't sure of the impact on the quality of the sauce. Also I wasn't quite sure if freezing would impact the process of making the recipe.

My take away from your explanation on managing the processing of the tomatoes is to freeze the number of tomatoes/weight called for in the recipe. That's the starting point and when thawed, I throw the whole shebang in the pot. If I want to remove some seeds to reduce potential bitterness, then I can do that to the tomatoes before I freeze them, but I wouldn't add any tomatoes to compensate for lost weight.

As for roasting, I'll have to look for some roasted tomato recipes. I have one that came out of a Better Homes and Garden magazine, but am skeptical about it's safety - especially after reading reviews about recipe sources in this forum.

I was mistakenly under the impression that I could use the same number of tomatoes called for in a recipe and roast them (sans oil) without impacting density since I would essentially just be removing some of the water which would otherwise be boiled off during the cooking down of the sauce. I do love the flavor of roasted toms!

Anyway, thanks again for the info - very helpful as always.

Lovage or cutting celery are herbs that impart a celery flavor, and are stronger when dried. But, they're not as common, so unless you know someone who has them...

Can you put larger chunks of celery in during the initial 25 min cook to add the flavor, then remove before continuing with the recipe?

What would be a "like"? Not really sure there is one except maybe lovage as mentioned or fennel. Carrots are in the same family but a different pH and more dense with much less water. Parsley maybe. But you could add any dried herbs you want as they don't change pH or density. Celery seed is a fairly common sub for celery.

There is a Roasted Tomato Sauce in the Ball Blue Book and you can even use the NCHFP instructions for Spaghetti Sauce without Meat and get the same result. You can roast those tomates in the oil that is allowed in it and easily leave out the celery and the mushrooms.

Plus there is another one here someplace called Katie's Roasted Tomato Garlic Soup that is all purpose sauce.

Dave

Thanks for the pointer. I made Katie's Roasted Tomato Garlic soup last year. It was very yummy. I plan to make more this year and hadn't thought about using it as a pasta sauce base... Clearly I need to get more creative...

I reviewed the NCHFP spaghetti sauce without meat recipe and see that it has pressure canning instructions - 20 minutes @ 10lbs for pints using a weighted gauge canner (which I have). Would that be a reasonable processing time for Carol's sauce or would it be safer to go for 35 minutes as in the BWB process? As you can see, I'd really like to pressure can this...

thanks again,

anne

Thanks for the pointer. I made Katie's Roasted Tomato Garlic soup last year. It was very yummy. I plan to make more this year and hadn't thought about using it as a pasta sauce base... Clearly I need to get more creative...

I reviewed the NCHFP spaghetti sauce without meat recipe and see that it has pressure canning instructions - 20 minutes @ 10lbs for pints using a weighted gauge canner (which I have). Would that be a reasonable processing time for Carol's sauce or would it be safer to go for 35 minutes as in the BWB process? As you can see, I'd really like to pressure can this...

thanks again,

anne