No the time is just an approximation even when you don't double or triple the recipe because it will vary greatly depending on what type of tomatoes used, how much they are drained first, etc.

It takes much longer - approx. 3 hours IME and that is when it isn't doubled or tripled. You added lots of liquid by tripling the recipe.

Set the pot in the fridge overnight so it can separate and tomorrow you can skim off lots of the water but you are still going to need several hours of cooking down time. Just set it on a med boil and stir often to prevent scorching and burning and cook it to the consistency you want.

Dave

Wow, okay.... I did get it down to where it was a bit thin but not horrible and it's now out of the canner. I think I'm going to leave it as is instead of reprocessing (unless it's not safe). I can always thicken it a bit when I use it. But I'll keep that in mind for future batches. Tomorrow I'm going to do the Chunky Basil from Ellie Topps and will be sure to go for thickness on that one.

Thanks so much for the help - the big thing is that I really don't want to poison anybody. :)

Kathy

When I'm making my marinara - after I peel my tomatoes, I'll squueze them in my hand and then throw them in a colander over a bowl. A lot of the tomato juice drips into the colander (which I then can as tomato juice). I assume this saves me some time in simmering down the sauce.

But yes - go for consistency, not time.

This really becomes an issue if you're making sauce from regular garden tomatoes and not paste varieties. You need to be judicious, but discarding some of the liquid will probably be necessary.

You can also reserve the tomato liquid and can it separately as a nutritious addition to soups and stews, similar to a vegetarian stock.

Carol

Oven roasting the tomatoes before making the sauce will reduce the volume easier than standing over the stove stirring. I spread out my chopped up tomatoes in two or three of my largest glass baking dishes (like for cooking lasagne) and bake at 350, stirring every once in a while. I'd love to find a big enough pan for the entire batch that isn't aluminum. I'll never go back to stirring on the stove. I did it your way the first couple of times I made sauce, then I saw the tip about oven roasting. It really works for reducing the volumn easily. I'll never go back! This is just so easy, plus it frees up your burners and your time.

I am definitely ready, willing, and needing to learn! My main focus is will the finished product be safe. So, here are my follow-on questions:
- Dave, Carol, Pixie_Lou - by removing some of the juice vs. boiling it down, what am I losing? Apparently not safety, but what about flavor? Or will the results be the same and I'll just get there faster if I somehow remove some of the "water" vs. boiling it down to evaporate it?

- Jill - is the oven roasting at 350 a safe way to do it if I'm canning? Would I then need to transfer to a pot and bring to a boil before canning or could I just can from the baking pans? What sorts of baking pans are safe: I have enamel over steel and ceramic pans.

Thanks everyone; I look forward to the time I can be answering questions here instead of asking them! :)

Kathy

Oops, I'm not awake yet. One more -very important- question.... Should I start over and reprocess yesterday's batch? Recipe says I should have 9 pints and I have 10.5 so clearly I didn't boil it down far enough. The last 1.5 jars didn't go in the canner, and I was planning to keep them in the fridge and use them in the next week. Are the others safe, even if the sauce is a bit thin? If they are safe I will leave them and move on. If not, I'll reprocess it all.....

Thanks,
Kathy

Note Jill said oven roasting BEFORE making the sauce. So you are roasting the tomato halves or quarters and then running them through the food mill and then cooking the sauce before putting it in jars and canning it. This is safe. It just depends on if you want the taste that roasting gives the sauce. Some do, some don't. Any pans except aluminum work fine. You never want to use aluminum pans with any acidic food.

As to the draining/skimming, what you are losing is tomato flavored water (which as others have pointed out can be canned to use in soups or cooked down into juice). Tomatoes have a lot of plain old water in them. How much depends on the variety. The water has no nutrients but you would lose a few from the suspended tomato particles that drain out with the water but not much. Flavor is concentrated by removing water regardless of the food so the flavor is improved, not lost.

Lastly, it all depends on what you personally consider "sauce", what consistency YOU want. Like a can of ALWAYS SAVE brand, or more like HUNTS or more like CONTADINA? Some water in it or stand up on the spoon thickness. All that is your choice.

Dave

thinner is not a problem with safety. Overly thick can be if it causes a density/heat penetration issue(center may not get as hot as it should).

I also make huge batches, and I plan on it taking hours to get the consistancey I like, even using paste tomatoes. But I also prefer to keep them at a gentle simmer, not rapid boil.

Okay, I made the following 3 recipes in the last two days with expected and actual yields...

Italian-Style Tomato Sauce (Ball Complete Book) 9pts - 10.5pts
Tomato Paste (Ball Complete Book) 9cups - 2.5cups
Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce (Ellie Topps) 9pts - 6.25pts

I understand that the expected yield is an estimate based on tomatoes used, consistency desired, etc., but my out put seems generally pretty outside the realm of what I would think a reasonable variation. And I have to admit the amount of time and effort compared to the output on the last 2 recipes above, especially the paste, have me wondering if this is all worth it!!! I cooked the paste for probably about 13 hours total; maybe 4 in a crockpot and the rest on the stove since the CP seemed too slow. I was aiming for the consistency of paste out of a can; is that too thick?

I am very much in learning mode and am not ready to give up yet, but I'd love to hear any comments any of you with more experience might want to share on how to know when to stop. Any ideas on how to tell if the consistency will change (thicken) when cool? Or .... ?

And in the meantime, tomorrow I'm going to do some raw pack tomatoes cuz all of the above doesn't matter! :)

Kathy

I roast the quartered tomatoes in the oven in glass dishes only to cook them down. After running through the food mill, everything else is prepared according to your canning recipe. I can't recall ever noticing a difference in flavor except maybe tasting richer because they are less watery.

"Tomato Paste (Ball Complete Book) 9cups - 2.5cups" is the one I would be concerned about. Unless your amount of tomatoes was way off what is called for then this was way too dense. It should go back into the pot and be thinned out to at least 6 cups total and then reprocessed.

You are using roma tomatoes and the recipe is written for large regular tomatoes so the amount of liquid and the cooking time will all be changed.

Can't comment on the Ellie Topp recipe as I don't use it.

I can't recall ever noticing a difference in flavor except maybe tasting richer because they are less watery.

Seriously? Roasting anything vs. boiling or braising or stewing or steaming it or grilling and no difference in taste? All methods of cooking foods produce very different flavors.

Dave

Dave, actually, the recipe calls for "50 large plum tomatoes, cored," which is what I used. It says to cook "until mixture is thick enough to mound on a spoon" - a pretty imprecise description to me. :) I interpreted that as paste-from-a-can consistency, which happened right when I stopped at 2.5 jars worth. Right up until I stopped, I would have said it was thick enough to "round on a spoon" for a while, but it was more like a very thick sauce than a paste.

To be specific, I'm using the recipe from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving with a date of 2006.

Kathy

Personally I have always found tomato yields to vary widely. I got 34 lbs of romas easlier this season and ended up with 18 pints of marinara. A few weeks later I got 40 lbs of romas (from a different farmer) and ended up with 36 pints of marinara. Last year I ended up with 22 pints of marinara from 40 lbs of romas.

I agree that they do vary. It also depends on how much you cook it down. We are all used to some variation in production = +/- a few jars - but a recipe that says 9 cups and you only get 2.5 is way too much variance for me to be comfortable with. Something is out of whack.

The Ball paste recipe is based on the NCHFP paste recipe and it calls for 4 doz. large tomatoes. So why Ball would have changed it to just romas I can't say. I have made it numerous times with minimal variance but then I would never make sauce out of just roma tomatoes either so that is likely some of the difference.

Either way, getting less than 1/4 of the expected yield indicates a problem of some kind so I'd freeze it since it is too late now to reprocess it.

Dave

Dave, I don't understand the difference between some of the Ball recipes.... there are quite a few that vary between the 2 Ball books I have. But that's another thread (which I may just start later). In the meantime, I agree with you re: my paste; it's been in the fridge since I canned it, and I will be freezing it today.

Thanks for your help. Now I'm going to start another thread on another question.....

Kathy