Canning Tomatoes

My mum went out to St. Jacobs for a mini holiday with my dad and I asked her to pick me up a half bushel of tomatoes...  Beauty!!

I decided to can some of them whole for sauce/chili/soup in the winter. Here's the recipe I was following: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/cooking_school/step_by_step_canned_tomatoes.php

I started by washing the jars with soap and water. I put them in a cold oven to sterilize, for 20 minutes once the oven had heated up.

I took the skin off the tomatoes by putting them in boiling water for a minute or so. Some split, some didn't, and I found that the ones that didn't were easy to split by running the back of the knife over a small part of the tomato. The heat seemed to make the split bigger and make it easier to peel. I took the tomatoes out of the boiling water and dropped them into cold water a few at a time to peel and core. I then filled a jar with them and added a tablespoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice, leaving 1/2 inch of headspace. 

I covered the jars and left them to boil for 35 minutes.

Beauty!!

Apple Butter–Part 3!

In finally getting to can the apple butter, I washed some small jars, heated up my big canning pot about 1/4 full with water, boiled my jars for 10 minutes, then put them aside on a cutting board (using the super fun jar lifter) to fill hem with goodness!  

I had reheated my apple butter in a pan to not shock the glass into breaking (cold butter+hot jar=danger) and boiled my lids in a small jar for 10 minutes. I grabbed the funnel that came with my canning kit to spoon the butter into the sterilized jars and poked it with the back of the nifty little headspace measuring device to release any air bubbles that might come to the surface when processing.  I made sure each jar had 1/4 inch of headspace to the rim, wiped the rim down of any butter that may have caught the rim, and used the nifty magnet stick to put a sterilized lid onto each jar.  I lightly screwed on a ring to each jar and processed them in the hot water bath for 10 minutes.  Out they came and voila!! Deliciousness canned!

The beautiful final product!!

Kind of unbelievable that that many apples made this little apple butter.....  Granted, one jar did break in the hot water bath :(, I gave some butter to my mum before processing, and I ate a bit of apple sauce when it was sauce but STILL.  Super concentrated apple sweetness! And the spices make it taste like pie!!!  A new favourite!