Well using a food mill would definitely make it easier and requires much less cooking time. Lemon juice or citric acid is required. BWB for quarts is 40 minutes unless high altitude. The link below is to the current guidelines.

But I sure would look into getting a food mill if you have lots to do. Several brands available. Mine is a Vittorio and I wouldn't make sauce without it. Check out this discussion.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Canning Tomato Sauce

thanks for the respnse and link. i'll add the lemon juice and will purchase a Vittorio. aint playing around this year.
thanks again.

Vittorio, is actually the very old name for VICTORIO. These tend to be a poorer design in that they leak from the shaft when your cranking. The site link below is a newer design that uses a newer design of twist-on conical strainers, compared to the older wing nut design. Also has a clear plastic extender that pushes the waste out further. Prago Trade is an importer of these products, and also sells meat slicers and sausage stuffers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Villaware/Roma food strainer

You're on the right track! As mentioned, you'll need to add lemon juice or citric acid to each jar before you fill it just to be sure the sauce has a safe pH. And you probably know your jars and lids need to be clean and hot when you fill them.

If you use meaty, sauce-type tomatoes to start, you won't have to simmer so long to get a nice, thick consistency.

Agreed that if you have a lot to do, a food mill will be useful to help speed up the straining out of seeds and skins. Everyone has his or her favourite type and how much you'll do may determine how much you're willing to spend to buy one.

A plain old strainer that you push the tomatoes through will work just fine, as will removing the skins and scooping out the seeds first, if you would rather spend time than money.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

Zabby

a bit out of order,

1/4 and boil tomatoes for about 1/2 hour,
then strain/food mill
then boil for 8 or more hours till desired consistency
then can.

a good cheat: I make 14 quarts at a time, fill a 16 qt. pot with processed tomato, add tomato paste while boiling down to hasten the process, when you get the desired consistency, start canning. use an off brand of paste so you don't get that hunts or contidina flavor in your sauce.

Ken's right that there are better food mills out there now than when I got my old Vittorio. But mine still works fine so I can't justify getting a new one. You can ;) so I'd definitely consider one of the newer improved models.

Dave

Another option is to freeze the tomatoes first. Skins slip right off as they are thawing and much of the water is released without even cooking. Less time in the "cook to desired thickness" phase.

This also allows you to harvest the tomatoes at their peak and process either;

1. When you have enough for a canner load or
2. Later in the fall when it's cooler and the heat in the house is appreciated!

You can also "bake" the sauce in the oven to avoid having to stand and stir so much. Leave the door ajar a bit.

Can y'all tell I'm lazy???!?

:+)

Deanna

No 'prepping' is necessary to get tomatoes into a sauce. Either the sauce gets cooked down once its run through a food strainer (forget a manual, or Foley, they are just way too slow). If you want a thicker sauce with less cooking down, use some very meaty tomatoes and plum types. I like an Oxheart and a few others that have less seeds and liquid. Once cut in halves or quarters, I scoop out most of the seeds and liquid gel, then run through the food strainer. I get a 'canned tomato sauce' consistancy or something even a bit thicker, without even cooking it down yet.

Many thanks again. Going after it like it won't be available in the stores later.. For the family and any singing grasshoppers who may find themselves in need later.

Garden variety Nyagous, BigB, LemonB, BetterB and any volunteers that bare.

2000lbs. in their season would be a projection. that's an all at once ripening amount. Would like to get it put up in a couple long days, as much as possible. Which means decent sized equipment to work with.

Original post was last years technique, spent about eight hours around a 30 quart kettle and only netted less than ten quarts of sauce.
Not much return for the energy put in.

Lightbulb went off to buy a bigger cauldron. Tommorrow, picking up an apple butter copper that might hold thirty gallons i don't know. it's big though and looks like it can hold a formidable amount. It's an outside toy for sure.

Thanks for the link directly to the prago page.

Let me pose this question in the name of reducing process inputs. Does anyone take the core out, puree the rest, skin and all through a food processor, and make your sauce from that? Does the quality suffer, can you still feel the skins on the palate when finished?

Skins wouldn't be a problem but the seeds might be in a food processor. Also putting tomatoes through a food processor seems like it would be rather slow. I used to run tomatoes through a Kitchen Aid strainer several times until the skins were gone and only the seeds were thrown away and the sauce was fine...still too slow.

Now I uses a power strainer that sucks in the tomatoes as fast as you can prep them...quarter or half them and dump them in the hopper once. I haven't timed it but my guess is a hundred pounds in five or ten minutes.

Then dump the uncooked sauce in a sieve over a large pot and the water drains off leaving a thick sauce.

Then cook for an hour or so. The sauce is already thick so the cooking isn't necessary for boiling off the excess water. Cooking is for the onions and the herbs.

Then can 14 quarts at a time in the All American pressure canner. You would need a couple of these to knock off 2000 pounds of tomatoes in short order.

Or you could increase production rates with a very large pot of boiling water. However you have to add acid for canning tomatoes in a boiling water bath.

Zeuspaul

The food strainer I mentioned will not allow any seeds or skins into the sauce. The holes in the conical sieve are very small and they just push stems and cores out and any fibers through as pulp, but seeds and skins go out the end. I take all that 'waste', and run it through a second time to push out all the rest of the liquid, and even then it will not allow any skins or seeds through. These food strainers can also use a motor unit instead of the hand crank. They are designed with the same kind of motor a pasta rolling machine would use. The link below also shows two different dedicated electric models for tomatoes only. Serious enough for the 2000 pounds of tomatoes!! Big Boy, Better Boy, Early Girl are fine as eating toms, but tend to be more watery and less pulpy. I grew many roma and plum types and also like the oxheart which is really meaty, but has a flaw, that its not as tasty as a home grown plum tomatoes. I get tomato seeds from Tomato Growers and also Totally Tomatoes. They have sections just for the sauce or paste type tomatoes.

One time I decided to make use of the skins and seeds, and put it all in a big powerful blender (Vitamix). It never broke down the seeds, but did good with the skins. I added some of the juice I extracted earlier and cooked it down to a thick paste. It was AWFUL!! Seeds and skins just don't make tomatoes taste good anymore, no matter what you do. I had made the mistake of not tasting that blended part and added it to a batch of sauce. Luckily it was just about 6 quarts and I had to toss it out, as it was the worst tasting mess I ever had. I even ruined a big stainless steel pot as it boiled dry and then warped the pot. I had fallen asleep while it was simmering.. Never do that again!! No bodies perfect..

Here is a link that might be useful: More food stariners

Zeuspaul, what model of electric food strainer do you use?

2000 lbs. of maters???!!! Holy marinara batman! How many tomato plants is that?

My tomato area used to handle more than 200 tomato plants alone. If the plants are big producers you can get many bushels. Last year, I only planted about 30 plants and was still overwhelmed, and couldn't even give any away after a while. It was the only time I grew just big sized ones like beefsteaks and other jumbo toms. They were not used in making any sauce as I still had about 130 quarts from previous years.

gardengrl, I have the Omcan Big 45 tomato squeezer. It is similar to the 1/2 hp electric milling machine rated at 850 pounds per hour in ksrogers' post.

Straining tomatoes is no longer a chore. It's a bit heavy so when tomato canning season arrives it stays on the kitchen counter until I am done.

Zeuspaul

Here is a link that might be useful: Omcan Big 45

wow zeuss, that's the equipment i'll be shooting for. what a price tag, will have to save back a bit for that one. it's a monster though, love it.

i have about 150 healthy plants. Figuring around 50lbs out of each plant all told, which i believe is modest because of the tender loving care afforded them, that is around 7500lbs for the entire season. So i projected around 2000lbs during a sudden ripening around early august.

I'm a one man show, with two kids who've been co-opted, so efficiency in all areas has taken over as it all grows.

This is a little off topic, but the purchase of a craftsman yard sweeper that collects grass clippings into a hopper made this amount of plants possible. No more weeding allowed for more time for learning how to preserve.

even have the corn mulched. that's never, ever happened before.

Zeuspaul,
How big is that sieve you put them in after straining?
M

The lionk I provided shows sevberal models of electric strainers too, just scroll down on the same page. The smaller all extric model has a 6 inch conical sieve. I saw the one just mentioned at the local wine hobby store as thet have it set up to crush grapes instead. Getting 50 pounds of tomatoes from each plant might be a bit optomistic in an estimate. Much of the tomato is water, so unless you cook the product down, you will have a lot of seperation in the jars. Thats the main reason I remove most of the seeds and that watery gel out of the centers before they get pushed through the food strainer. Without that step, the cooking off time is almost doubled. It also depends on the tomato types. Those that are big, and slice open, and have many small cavities of seeds and liquid are less dense and put out less usable pulp. I think the Omcan model has an 8 or 10 inch strainer.

wow. this has turned into a useful education with a lot of options. one of the electric 1/4th hp models is in my price range and will cut sooo much of the work out of this.
live and learn for sure, next year there'll be better paste tomatoes out there. the nyagous are small clustering with more meat, they're dark but constitue about half the plants, if possible will stick mainly with those.

chicken manure and lime, fifty pounds on the vine (i hope). thanks so much folks.

Mellyofthesouth, The sieve I use measures 10 inches (25 cm) across. The mesh size is 18 squares per inch (7 per cm). The smaller kitchen sieves I have are finer mesh. You don't need a fine mesh.

I use two big stainless stock pots. The sieve goes over the smaller one. After the sauce comes out of the electric strainer it goes directly to the sieve. The water runs right through. Then the thick sauce gets dumped into the larger pot. There is no need to boil the water off.

I make vegetable soup with the drained off water.

This year I plan on making a final tomato marinara sauce product. The wife likes to open a can of sauce and use it right away. In the past I just have canned the thickened tomato sauce. This will take longer up front but save time later on.

Hankjrfan, If I had it to do gain I may go for the more affordable 1/4 hp models. I was skeptical of 1/4 hp as that is similar to the hp of the Kitchen Aid which is slow. However the Kitchen Aid wastes a lot of power by trying to push the tomatoes through too fine a mesh at too close a tolerance. I believe the 1/4 hp dedicated models would strain a lot of tomatoes quickly.

Also the Omcan Big 45 does not come with a spatter shield. I drape a piece of aluminum foil over it.

I don't see a need for paste tomatoes. However the size and shape of the tomatoes can make a difference. To reduce processing time a tomato that fits the throat of your strainer without having to cut it would be a time saver.

I am growing a few Opalkas this year. The long and narrow shape may facilitate processing with little or no need for cutting. Round tomatoes don't catch in the strainer as well as cut or long tomatoes.

Zeuspaul