Quote:
Originally Posted by Hotwired
Tomato sauce usually has enough acid to keep the Ph low even when there are finely chopped peppers and onions in it. It certainly doesn't hurt to pressure can it. I pressure can everything except canned half tomatoes. Pressure canning cooks them too much for me. If I want stewed tomatoes I like to cook them that way.
Here's my methods of canning......
Hot Water Bath Canning 101: http://www.hotwiredgardens.com/pdf/C...or_Dummies.pdf
Pressure Canning 101: http://www.hotwiredgardens.com/pdf/C...or_Dummies.pdf
A pressure canner is the best investment a gardener can make. |
It's recommended to add citric acid or lemon juice to all tomato products. It's really hard to tell if tomatoes are acidic enough because just taste alone doesn't work. A tomato can be low brix and taste acidic without being very acidic or high brix and taste sweet and have plenty of acidity. It's just impossible to tell. And, pH meters are notoriously inaccurate, plus they need to be calibrated everytime they're used. Finally, canned food will raise in pH as it gets older. So it can test okay and in 6 months be unsafe, becoming a breeding ground in the pantry for botulism if improperly canned.
But, this isn't meant to scare. It's still really, really easy to do things safely. Just follow the directions and don't make any changes. Also, don't blindly follow recommendations on the Internet from just any old forum. The Garden Web Harvest Forum has some canning experts that have actually gone to school and teach safe canning guidelines. There are some safe books and websites. They need to be current ( within less than about 10 years old), not your great grandmothers old recipe, other than jams and other high acidity foods. You'll start to learn how to recognize safe and unsafe sources and recipes as you educate yourself. A good place to start is the Ball Complete Or the Ball Blue Book and reading the entire NCHFP website, put out by the University of Goergia. Colorado State and Minnesota also have pretty good websites.