Canning Tomato Sauce

I finally had a free day to get some needed chores done around the house.  At the top of my list was canning tomato sauce to free up some space in the freezer.  I had four and a half gallons of whole tomatoes sitting in my freezer from this fall's tomato harvest.  I could have had more, but I ran out of room in the freezer and I'm sad to say that many of my tomatoes went to waste.  The chickens have been cleaning up what I couldn't get to in time and next year I will probably plant fewer plants since they are so prolific.

I began by giving all the tomatoes a warm bath to help them thaw and also to help remove the skins before they went into the pot.  I turned on the stove and brought the whole tomatoes to a boil, stirring them up and smashing them as they cooked.  Once they were all cooked to mush I put the sauce through my food mill to remove the seeds and any big chunks that I missed when I was peeling the tomatoes.  The sauce was then returned to the pot where it continued to cook down for several hours.  I like my sauce on the thick side so I reduced it by half to make it the right consistency.  While that was cooking down I prepared my jars and canner for the next step.  The extra skins and seeds went to the chickens who promptly made quick work of the small pile.

The next step was filling the jars with the sauce.  I was canning pints so each jar got one tablespoon of lemon juice before getting filled with the boiling sauce.  I left 1/2 inch of headspace in each jar, wiped the rims and tightened down the lids before returning them to the canner to boil for 45 minutes.  I only ended up with nine pints of sauce this season.  I still had six pints of sauce left over from last year so this small amount should keep me happy until next year.  I don't eat a ton of tomato based dishes, but between the salsa and the sauce I should have plenty to last me.  I am always surprised by how little sauce I get from a huge number of tomatoes.  Perhaps next year I will have time to can a batch of sauce while the season is still going strong so I don't have to depend on how much room I have in my freezer.