Carol's multi-use tomato sauce has a nice mix of veggies in it, much like my own sauce (with much more as it's for fresh use). I'm going to try canning it this year. a few questions for the group...

1. It calls for celery which I don't really care for. Could I leave it out or add another carrot in it's stead?

2. I have the 921 American pressure canner with a capacity of 19 pints. Could I pressure can this recipe and if I could, for how long would I can it? I'm not at a higher altitude, so that wouldn't come into play.

3. Does freezing the tomatoes for a few weeks impact their flavor?

4. As I plan to do a sauce canning extravaganza, I'll be freezing tomatoes in preparation for the big day. I plan to weigh them before freezing and label what I freeze. Would that be considered the "starting weight" for the recipe or would I weigh them after they defrost and I remove the seeds? Or should I cut them in half and scrape out what seeds I can, weigh them for the starting point, and then freeze them?

5. I also love the flavor of roasted tomatoes with a few garlic cloves and a sprig or 2 of thyme. Can I substitute some or all of the tomatoes with roasted tomatoes? Would I weigh them first for the starting weight (scrape seeds before or after roasting?), then roast them (and probably freeze them until I had enough for the canning extravaganza).

Many thanks in advance!

anne

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

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.

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?

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

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

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