[shokkyy]

I finally got around to converting some of my tomato mountain into passata with my SoI passata machine. All went well to that point. I then tried following the Cevenol instructions for heat processing the jars and at this point I came unstuck. I only made 2 jars to try things out, so I used a normal saucepan to do the heat processing. I wrapped the jars in thin tea towels so they didn't touch each other or the pan and I boiled them for 20mins but no sign of the dimple lids going down so I kept boiling. One and a half hours later, those lids are still not going down. And what's more, when I took the jars out the passata seemed to have separated a bit, with a watery bit at the bottom and the tomato sitting above that. I don't know if that's down to the extended boiling or not.

What am I doing wrong? The Cevenol instructions say to fill the pan with water to 2 inches below the jar lids, which I did, but I've seen other instructions that say you should immerse the jars. Is this what's causing my problem?

[mumofstig]

The dimple doesn't go down during the heat treatment.............it goes down with a pop while the jars are cooling
(Next time.....When you remove them from the heat try to screw them tighter if they will go)
As long as the dimples are down once the jars are cold then you have a good vacuum seal

Yours are now super sterilised 

[shokkyy]

 
No matter how good the instructions, there's always one dope who gets it wrong. I went back and checked and they have now popped. Thank you

Got another one for you. I also tried oven drying some tomatoes. It's not exactly easy with my oven because the timer only goes up to 2hrs and you can't switch the wretched thing on without using the timer, which means I keep having to go back and switch it on again every 2hrs. But when they were dried (hopefully enough) I put them in a jar and covered with olive oil. Cevenol says they must be completely covered by oil, but they just keep insisting on floating to the top. Can you suggest anything I can do to stop that?

[Val H]

I've found these great for stopping things bobbing up above the oil/vinegar etc
http://www.jamjarshop.com/buy/viscodiscs53/

[Oliveview]

I bottled some lemons and they kept popping up to the top of the jar so I used another jar lid (plastic) and put that upside down in the jar and the lemons stayed put!
Pamela

[joyfull]

I've found these great for stopping things bobbing up above the oil/vinegar etc
http://www.jamjarshop.com/buy/viscodiscs53/

they look quite a handy thing to have Val, thanks 

[Trillium]

Shokky, you save a lot of time and money if you add the passata sauce very hot into the jars and immediately boil them. When I've filled my bottling pot, I leave remaining sauce on simmer in the cooking pot until I'm ready to bottle the next batch and put it onto boil.

As for the bottle popping, I usually do mine in the evening when it's cooler and my OH has to go to bed early and it drives him crazy having endless lids popping.