One of my friends kindly gifted me her water bath canner and Ball Blue book. I also checked out the UGA food preservation page. This is my first time canning and it’s especially important to me that I follow a safe recipe. Can someone explain HOW normal people can without tweaking? For example, the Ball tomato sauce recipe calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes, and also says that the tomatoes should be at peak ripeness. How is anyone harvesting that many tomatoes at the perfect time to can them? Wouldn’t it be risky to use less than the amount of tomatoes in the recipe? I feel sort of disappointed because I thought canning would be a way to save the excess foods I have, but now I feel like I need to go to the store to buy more to can according to the recipes
Pic of my current harvest attached, I’ll buy more tomatoes, but dang I cannot find a recipe that will work with this yield. And, what if I don’t want to put bell peppers in my salsa???!! Or I don’t want it as spicy as the recipe seems to call for?!
by bananasmab
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The best ELI5 I can think of is to send you to the wiki from this subreddit. [https://www.reddit.com/r/Canning/wiki/index/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Canning/wiki/index/)
For example, the Ball tomato sauce recipe calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes, and also says that the tomatoes should be at peak ripeness. How is anyone harvesting that many tomatoes at the perfect time to can them?
*Lots of people freeze their tomatoes as they harvest them until they have enough. Not all canning recipes can use previously frozen tomatoes, but sauce is a great use. [https://ucanr.edu/site/uc-master-food-preservers-central-sierra/article/preserve-it-series-how-safely-can-previously](https://ucanr.edu/site/uc-master-food-preservers-central-sierra/article/preserve-it-series-how-safely-can-previously)
Pic of my current harvest attached, I’ll buy more tomatoes, but dang I cannot find a recipe that will work with this yield. And, what if I don’t want to put bell peppers in my salsa???!! Or I don’t want it as spicy as the recipe seems to call for?!
*You can use less hot peppers, our you can leave them out completely. That’s a safe tweak of a recipe. [https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/extension/publications/play-it-safe-safe-changes-and-substitutions-tested-canning-recipes](https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/extension/publications/play-it-safe-safe-changes-and-substitutions-tested-canning-recipes)
Get the newest edition of the ball blue book. Follow it closely. Seriously, that’s the ELI5 explanation.
Also, remember… don’t can visibly damaged/diseased fruit. There are quite a few up in that photo that should not go into canning. I typically eat those right away, make them into something fresh, or remove the damged spots and freeze for later immediate use.
Can the tomatoes using Ball’s crushed tomato recipe. Then later you can use them as you cook sauces or other recipes.
[https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=crushed-tomatoes](https://www.ballmasonjars.com/blog?cid=crushed-tomatoes)
I freeze tomatoes until Im ready to do a big Sauce Day. You cant use frozen maters for all recipes, but they are ok for some.
I also have a ton of tomato plants so 45 lbs in a week isnt unreasonable at my house!
I do hope someone with more experience, or one of the friendly mods checks in here, but here’s my two cents. As always, continue doing your own research to double check me. I’m fairly certain you can find this info on safe sites like the NCFHP.
Scaling recipes down is safe as long as you scale all ingredients precisely, you DO NOT increase jar size, and you follow processing times precisely.
What is making your chosen recipe spicy? Dry spices can be changed however you like.. adding, removing, and omitting are all safe as these ingredients do not contribute to the pH value.
Peppers are also interchangeable. You may, for example, replace jalepeño with the same amount of a sweeter pepper.
I don’t wanna be spamy but my Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving has recipes for Basic Tomato Sauce (add seasoning as desired), Seasoned Tomato Sauce (no bell pepper, dried pepper flakes which could be omitted), and Italian-style Tomato Sauce (has garlic, onion, celery, and carrot, and again hot pepper flakes which could be lessened or ommited entirely). Italian-style only calls for 4.5 lbs of tomatoes.
I will share more pics if you’d like one of these recipes.
https://preview.redd.it/llh7w40apjmh1.jpeg?width=3072&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=64f826d74fda4ed1e25c66d7f1713d227a231cd2