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What is your favorite way to preserve Early Girl tomatoes?

10 years ago

I have tried for years to grow Roma tomatoes so I could can some sauce. But I guess it's just too hot here so this year we grew Early Girl. We picked our first tonight, about 20 of them and I'd like to preserve them. I've never canned any tomatoes other than chow chow with green tomatoes.

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Comments (6)

digdirt2
10 years ago
Variety doesn't make any difference as the same methods apply to all varieties. So it depends on how you would use them the most. Canned plain tomatoes can be used for any number of recipes so the instructions for canning crushed tomatoes (linked below) is one of the most popular methods.

If you'd use more tomato sauce than whole or chopped tomatoes then you can turn any tomato into sauce and using anything other than Romas will deliver a better tasting sauce. Most use a mixture of many different varieties to make sauce for either canning or freezing as it will deliver a far superior flavored sauce.

Canning salsa is probably the next most popular method but it can be tricky since it also includes low acid ingredients so only tested and approved recipes can be used for it.

Of course you can also freeze them plain and use them for cooking if you don't want to get into canning.

Check out all the canning and freezing instructions for them at NCHFP

Hope this helps.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP - Canning Crushed Tomatoes with no added liquid
TxMarti
Original Author
10 years ago
I meant different methods of preservation, like dehydrating, canning, or freezing?
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I am so glad that so many of you know what I am talking about. In my usual mad scientist way I think I am going to try every way of preserving tomato slices. At this point in the year though, I have seen so many of my ideas go awry that I won't presume to pre-judge any of the methods before I have actually tried them myself. I have a recipe book here for canning all types of tomato preserves. I would imagine that tomato preserves are fairly delicious in place of ripe august tomatoes. Olga, I have a friend that spent two years in the peace corps working in Moldova, and she was amazed at how everything there was pickled and preserved. How do you ferment the vegetables, what kinds of ingredients do you use to accomplish the task. Oh, and pickling and preserving in the western world tends to stay away from pickling and fermenting things, in my experience, pickles and tomatoes are the only vegetable that is really canned over here, because of the desire for most vegetables to keep as close to their ripe flavor as possible, hence quick freezing for most home grown produce. I can't find a recipe for processing just the tomato juice itself, to keep in a jar until I am ready to rehydrate my dried tomatoes, If I just took the juice of a tomato, and filled a jar with it, then used that juice to rehydrate the same variety of tomato it came from, would that work? Most of the tomatoes I have growing are not paste tomatoes though, so I am going to have to find a way to preserve all of the brandywine, black, hybrid, and cherry tomatoes other than making a sauce. I would imagine that preserving non paste tomatoes would take a lot longer to reduce down to what was needed for sauce/preserves/catsup/ketchup/jelly. But I'll be the first to admit this will be my first year canning tomatoes myself, and I know nothing. When I was growing up I watched my parents do it for a few years, and then they just started to buy ragu... *facepalm* Most of what was grown consisted of early girls, romas, and jet stars, no epic historical heirloom tomatoes to be had.
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digdirt2
10 years ago
In that case - canning, by far. I think I am safe in saying that far more tomatoes get canned then get frozen and/or dehydrated together. Especially when dealing with a large crop.

Dave
TxMarti
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks. I picked them Friday. Do you think Monday would be too late to can them?
S L
5 years ago
I was just looking up freezing early girl tomatoes. I've read never to cook bake or fry early girl, so your answer confused me. If you shouldn't cook, bake or fry them how could you can them. I've read they are good as a salsa, salads etc., Maybe you could freeze your salsas and freeze your tomatoes. Look up the Early girls site, it's alot of work growing tomatoes [fun though isn't it, I sit up all night , every nite reading all these sites] and time , don't do something your not sure of.. Jerry Baker has alot of fun potions and advice to learn from too ,Good luck. Wish we could know how it worked out for you. I just saw the date on this, so maybe this will be useful for someone else.
digdirt2
5 years ago
"I've read never to cook bake or fry early girl, so your answer confused me."

No idea where you read that or what their reasoning may be but many people can Early Girls in various ways every year and they do get cooked during the processing. They aren't the most tasty or popular growing variety of the 1000's of tomato varieties available. Indeed many growers turn up their nose at them. But you can bet they do get "cooked" in all sorts of ways. ;-)

Dave

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