Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: GrannieAnnie on August 30, 2006, 20:35
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Well, so far, I've got 46lbs of tomatoes chopped, bagged and frozen, so we'll be alright for tomato soup and pasta sauce for the winter.
I've got my 2nd hand freezer from Ebay now!!!!!!
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Our Plum Roma are just starting to ripen, so much making of sauce to follow. Eventually we end up just freezing tomatoes whole!
Added 16 bags (a bag being a good portion for two) of sweetcorn to the freezer yesterday. Probably got double that to go - so a portion of sweetcorn every week in our diet for a year.
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Believe it or not...I never even thought about freezing our tomatoes! are you preparing them in any way or just washing? or just straight into the freezer?
We make some chutney to John Seymour's recipe but what with Jam, blanching veggies etc, freezing the tomatoes is very tempting!
Thanks :)
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I freeze them whole in freezer bags they make a lovely clickety clackety noise when solid, I've caught the girls in the freezer just getting them out to play with them for a minute or two. (We don't do Playstations! :lol: )
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Ditto re storing toms whole in freezer bags - leaves me time to focus on other harvesting activities.
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I just eat mine. Never seem to be enough
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we are awaiting our glut of beef tomatoes at the moment,off 3 plants we have around 70 toms.good job we have kids who enjoy eating. :lol:
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When I first mentioned a glut of tomatoes to my firend Jacqui, she said I freeze mine when I get too many, and I said but don't they tke up a lot of room in your little freezer? she said no, I roughly chop them, then they fit into smaller spaces. so that's what I do now. I chop them up, put into freezer bags, suck as much air out as I can to help cut down on air as well as space, then put the bag in an old (clean) buttery stuff tub. then freeze them. Once frozen, I take the bag out and reuse the tub, and the tomatoes are in a nice neat block which stacks much better in the freezer!
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We roast our toms then blitz them in the food processer with a handfull of basil then freeze.I have been told that they can be bottled like this so I am going to try this as it will free up freezer space and be more flexible if I use different sized jars.
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We roast our toms then blitz them in the food processer with a handfull of basil then freeze.I have been told that they can be bottled like this so I am going to try this as it will free up freezer space and be more flexible if I use different sized jars.
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... sauce first, then freeze them.
I roast them in the oven with a finely diced onion or two and some red pepper if I have it for about 40 mins.
Then blitz with one of those hand blender things with a splosh of water and freeze.
I used to add basil to some, chilli to others, but it's a darn sight easier to make on whacking great lot and then season to taste one you've whipped it out the freezer.
I ALWAYS have a jar of this sauce in my fridge in the summer months, home late ... and the basis of dinner is there, whether you want ratatouille, curry or pasta ... brilliant.
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made a sauce last night from cherry toms, with garlic, chill and basil in. was the most aamazing sauce I have ever had. All home grown, I love this new hobby I have this year.
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Lost all my plants to blight before the tomatoes could ripen, so there'll be enough green tomato chutney made to feed the whole of Devon this weekend :D
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We do passata! Takes up half the space in bottles with a tell-tale dimple in the top - even so, commandeered the cupboard in No.1 son't bedroom :lol:
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Hi sprout, does homemade passata go thick like the one I buy in the shops? How do you do it?
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Hi grannieannie, this is the way we do it at chateau sprout :)
Preparation
Wash and cut toms in halves or quarters - no smaller!
Pressure cook toms to full pressure, let pressure drop naturally
Clear watery juice will have separated from the flesh. Tip contents of pressure cooker into a seive over the preserving pan. The watery juice will go through, leaving the pulp in the seive.
Put the pulp out of the way to cool.
Start to boil off the juice. Boil until it is syrupy (reduced to about 1/8 of original volume). This juice-boiling helps reduce the volume quickly, and the clear juice will not stick to the bottom of the pan!
Squidge the cooled tomato pulp through the passata machine (we put it through four times to get all the mush we can)
Add mush to syrupy juice in pan.
Bring to boil and simmer for ten minutes to a quarter of an hour, making sure it doesn't stick. We think this short simmering of the pulp keeps a fresher taste.
The passata will be very thick so a spoon will stand up in it.
(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/passata/IMG_0186.jpg)
Bottling
Boil the kettle, put jars in the sink, lids in a bowl, and pour boiling water over everything, including the funnel.
Take the passata off the heat until the last bubble blops.
Put two bottles at a time on the worktop - one to fill, one to transfer the funnel to whilst the lid goes on.
(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/passata/IMG_0187.jpg)
Fill bottle from pan using funnel. If any tomato gets on the jar mouth, wipe it off immediately - the mouth of the jar must be completely clean.
(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/passata/IMG_0188.jpg)
Immediately screw on lid tight. It's not like jam, filling all the jars then topping off - we do them one at a time to make sure the goodies inside stay sterile.
(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/passata/IMG_0189.jpg)
There's always some left over (see bottle on right) - this either gets used during the week, or tipped into the next batch and boiled for a few minutes, then bottled again.
(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/passata/IMG_0190.jpg)
This is posted with a little trepidation, as I know there are REAL experts out there who have been doing it for a lot longer than we have :roll: :tongue2: so please post variations and improvements :)
The belt and braces approach is to simmer the bottles in a water bath for 20 minutes or so - we tried without, and there was no difference, so stuck to the simple method :shock:
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I don't have a passata machine, nor a pressure cooker anymore, but when you say about mushing the pulp, do you keep everything in, including the seeds? Could I just do it with my little stick blender do you think? As my Kenwood chef's motor has gone, so I can't use my liquidiser.
What's a passata machine?
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Hi grannieannie, the passata machine has been one of my best kitchen investments! You put the toms through (raw or cooked) and it separates the seeds and skin from the pulp, so you're left with pure tomato pulp. Like rubbing it through a seive, but faster and easier 8)
http://www.seedsofitaly.com/product/444
It also de-seeds soft fruit with small seeds e.g. blackberries, rasps, guzgogs etc.
Some people do just whizz the toms in their blender - I remember squashing them through a seive, and what a chore that was! I guess it depends entirely on what goes down well in your household :wink:
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Oooohhhh, sprout, I like that machine! Perhaps I can put it on my wish list for Christmas??? I'll have to make do for now though!!!
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I'm jealous of your pretty sauce bottles, where did you get them, supersprout??
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Hi grannieannie, the passata machine has been one of my best kitchen investments! You put the toms through (raw or cooked) and it separates the seeds and skin from the pulp, so you're left with pure tomato pulp. Like rubbing it through a seive, but faster and easier 8)
http://www.seedsofitaly.com/product/444
It also de-seeds soft fruit with small seeds e.g. blackberries, rasps, guzgogs etc.
Some people do just whizz the toms in their blender - I remember squashing them through a seive, and what a chore that was! I guess it depends entirely on what goes down well in your household :wink:
It sounds a bit like a food mill or a moulier (sp?). I bought a food mill at Tchibo for £9 a few weeks ago. Worked lovely on blackberries! Now have lovely seedless blackberry cordial to enjoy.
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I'm jealous of your pretty sauce bottles, where did you get them, supersprout??
Thank you Heather, those are from Franchi too - not cheap, but a good investment imo 8) Yes, the passata machine does the job of a mouli, but like an old fashioned spong mincer (if you're old enough to remember those) :wink: