Has anyone used an IMMERSION BLENDER...
 

Has anyone used an IMMERSION BLENDER to save seeds? I have seen tomatillos put in a normal blender and pureed to collect seeds before, supposedly the blade never touches any seed...

Would an immersion blender (stick blender) work on tomatoes without damaging the seeds? Maybe the gel protects the seeds?

Has anybody tried this, either normal or immersion, on tomatoes to collect seeds for fermentation?

Thanks.

Seems like more than necessary, but if you need an excuse to buy one for the kitchen - there you go!

They only way to find out for sure with your method is to try it out on some store bought tomatoes that have sat out and softened.

Worth

My immersion blender liquifies everything if it is run long enough. I wouldn't use it for seed saving.

[QUOTE=Salsacharley;718559]My immersion blender liquifies everything if it is run long enough. I wouldn't use it for seed saving.[/QUOTE]

Charley, no chunky salsa?

I haven't tried it on tomatoes other than canned SM's. I still have lots of tomatoes to process for seeds, we may have gotten our first frost/freeze at about 7:00am, I already picked about 4 or 5 trays/buckets worth & brought most inside before today, and I left the house this morning about 7:30am and the cat litter buckets' lids had water on them, none froze or it wasn't long enough at 32F to visually see a freeze.

I had extra tomatoes in/on those buckets in the driveway and am thinking of taking some of those tomatoes and trying to germinate ~20 of them, the typical way, and maybe another 20 after run thru a blender, ANY blender. I would save time if I found somebody that actually did it before me! I don't know if there's a greater chance they'd be mangled by a stick blender versus a normal blender or even a food processor for a pulse or two...

I find it amazing that the blades don't hit tomatillo seeds...or at least they don't affect things.

[QUOTE=PhilaGardener;718550]Seems like more than necessary, but if you need an excuse to buy one for the kitchen - there you go![/QUOTE]

I already bought the cheapest one I could find, I think it was $10-$11 a few years ago!

Why?
Seeds are alive and easily damaged, especially fresh seeds with a soft seed coat as in the case of fresh wet tomato seeds.
It would not save any time or effort particularly especially if you consider the time to get it out, use it, clean it and put it away.
KarenO

I second this thought.

[QUOTE=Salsacharley;718559]My immersion blender liquifies everything if it is run long enough. I wouldn't use it for seed saving.[/QUOTE]

You can adjust the consistency of your salsa/sauce by how long you run your immersion blender. Short shots will leave chunky material. Long runs will liquify.

I don't have any tomatoes I am planning on blending right now, but here is a jar of tabasco and red biquihno peppers I have been fermenting for a couple of months. The first pic shows the untreated pepper solution and the seeds are quite visible. The second pic shows the solution after running the immersion blender for a couple of minutes. There are traces of seeds in the solution but none are intact.
The third pic shows the solution in a sauce bottle ready to use.

[QUOTE=KarenO;718571]Why?
Seeds are alive and easily damaged, especially fresh seeds with a soft seed coat as in the case of fresh wet tomato seeds.
It would not save any time or effort particularly especially if you consider the time to get it out, use it, clean it and put it away.
KarenO[/QUOTE]

Two uses. First, I have lots of tomatoes that are cracked & rotting that are hard to handle, I can't cut them because many are literally falling apart. I put these in a quart container and have at it with a knife trying to break them up to get to the seeds. I sometimes use a potato masher.

Second, I have a dozen or more cherry or currant-sized varieties. Some of these are smaller than the currant variety Spoon, and one actually IS the variety Spoon, and even using a potato masher some get thru the openings in the masher.

I am starting to believe that the seed gel protects the seeds. Think about it for a minute---when you slice a tomato in half to squeeze the seeds out for fermenting, have you ever seen even ONE seed that was sliced in half? I haven't. And blending tomatillo seeds in a blender, I have not seen any damaged seeds, have any of you?

[QUOTE=Salsacharley;718619]You can adjust the consistency of your salsa/sauce by how long you run your immersion blender. Short shots will leave chunky material. Long runs will liquify.

I don't have any tomatoes I am planning on blending right now, but here is a jar of tabasco and red biquihno peppers I have been fermenting for a couple of months. The first pic shows the untreated pepper solution and the seeds are quite visible. The second pic shows the solution after running the immersion blender for a couple of minutes. There are traces of seeds in the solution but none are intact.
The third pic shows the solution in a sauce bottle ready to use.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the pics! I wasn't planning on liquifying the tomato, just busting it apart. And pepper seeds are more brittle type of seed, and they don't have a gel surrounding them. The larger tomatoes with big seeds I can see possibly getting bruised if they don't have gel.... but the small currant size tomatoes with seeds maybe 1mm in size, similar to tomatillos I must question if the seeds would face the same fate.

Tomato seeds and fast moving stainless steel are totally 100% incompatible. My most adamant recommendation is to not use any kind of blender or other whirling blade to try and save seeds. You wrote about soft tomatoes that were hard to remove the seeds. I do it all the time because those seeds are the most mature and have fantastic germination numbers. If the messiness or the odor is freaking you out, then put the whole tomato into a jar or other container and ferment the whole thing. I squeeze them into a strainer and pick out some of the debris before jarring them up. I also cut up the ones that have "overly ripe" areas. The good parts are used to collect seeds and the rotting bad parts are discarded.

There are no shortcuts on saving undamaged seeds that involve blenders. I save more than 50,000 tomato seeds each year and I will never even consider using anything but hand collection and fermentation to save seeds. The way I see it is that by using the blender, you may get lucky and only damage (and subsequently destroy the viability) on 40% of the seeds. Which 40% are bad and which are not so bad? Is the distribution of bad seeds even thru out the mix? Or are there clumps of 90% bad over here and 55% good over there?

You can surely make your own decisions on this subject, but my opinion is that it would be a huge waste of time that would leave you unsure and wondering about the quality of your collection of varieties. If you trade seeds, how can you feel good about the quality of what you are sending out? I hope you experiment and report to the community what results you get. Good luck on this endeavor.

Possibly if you have a food processor get an extra blade for it and grind of the sharp edge.
They dont go near as fast as boat motors and blenders.

Hand held electric mixer.
Worth

I have used an immersion blender for saving seeds when I only have a small amount of fruit. I will put the fruit in a container of about 1 gallon size and put a lot of water in with the fruit. Just pulse several times. Let settle and drain off the crud. Do that several times til it looks clean and save. Works well and germ is usually fine - 80%+.

Carol