These Two Hands

(Does anyone else think that “sauce the toms” should become cutesy lingo of some kind? You know, “what’d you do this weekend?” “Oh, I sauced the toms!” Common parlance y’all! Or maybe I’m just a GIANT DORK.)

Anyway.

You might remember I had all those red tomatoes (about 15 lbs) sitting around from when I harvested before hurricane Irene swept through? I knew I had to make something from them, but what? I already had 19 quarts crushed tomatoes, 13 quarts pasta sauce, 9 8oz jars tomato jam, 21 pints pico de gallo salsa, and 13 pints chipotle-corn salsa. Plus about a gallon and a half of tomato bisque in the fridge and freezer.

And y’all, I had to make something. Quickly. Because tomatoes picked at their peak don’t last past a day or two. And there is an odor. And unpleasantness.

Well, when all else fails return to the basics. Tomato sauce. (From the tomatoes that do NOT smell.)

I hadn’t wanted to do a tomato sauce because it takes for.ev.er to boil it all down and then put it through a food mill and boil it some more. But this time I got smart – we had electricity, why not put it to work for me? I broke out the slow cooker.

I first rough-chopped the tomatoes and tossed them in a biiiig pot with a couple tablespoons of salt to help break them down. They simmered for a little bit – maybe 30 minutes – and then I put the food mill over the slow cooker and cranked those babies into a puree. Didn’t take that long actually – since they were still so watery it was quick work. They rendered about a gallon of watery sludge. Then the brimful slow cooker was set on low overnight.

Would it scorch and burn the tomatoes? Well, I had enough already so we’d just have to sacrifice them to the name of science.

Et voila. It didn’t scorch – it ended up thick and wonderful, smelling like the richest ketchup ever. See how thick it is? It didn’t separate at all.

And in the morning all I had to do was pot it up with some lemon juice and process the jars for 35 minutes. Easy-peasy whole food free of all additives and other chemical-y nastiness.

And now I know exactly how I’m doing my ketchup (if I’m lucky enough to get another load of tomatoes after Irene all but drowned the vines!)

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 1st, 2011 at 12:07 pm and is filed under food, preserving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.