How to can tomatoes..fun and easy

hey folks this is Josh tawny Ridge farmer welcome to the farm vlog today we are in the kitchen once again in the kitchen on the stern Ridge farm and today we're going to be taking these Tomatoes these beautiful wonderful tomatoes and I have a big pile of tomatoes all over here and we're gonna start canning them so we're going to show you a way to successfully can your Tomatoes with a pressure cooker so come along guys and we'll have some fun here on the farm and we'll show you how we're preserving and Kanin our Tomatoes so that we have wonderful tomato sauce and tomatoes to use and all sorts of stuff all winter long alright let's go have fun [Music] well guys here we are in the Stoney Ridge farm kitchen this is our kitchen this was built and designed by me and mrs. Stoney Ridge we bought a $3500 14 by 80 mobile home to put on our 200 acre farm to live in until we could pay our land off and then eventually build our house hopefully build our house without going in debt super awesome guys if you like this kind of content if you enjoy this stuff be sure and hit that like button subscribe to the channel we have so much wonderful stuff here to share with you on the farm let's get busy on the canning process here this is our pressure canner it's a 12 quart antique press tote pressure canner that I got for my father and I think he bought it back sometime in the late 70s and it still works SuperDuper awesome I'll post links to all of the stuff that you see here and all the stuff that you'll need in order to can and also the SuperDuper awesome book let me go get it for you so these are two books that we use on the farm quite frequently and it's the Blue Book the BAL Blue Book for canning there'll be a link down below for that in the video description and also a new book that we just picked up it's called butchering it's butchering poultry rabbit lamb goat pork it's a comprehensive photographic guide to butchering so if you're into sustainable living and stuff like that awesome book for you to pick up little me links down in the video description to all the goodies that I use in the video and if you don't see it post me a comment and I'll find it for you okay so here we are and what we have here we're sterilizing our jars the first thing you need to do is get your jars heat it up and sterilize we're boiling them in hot water steeping them in hot water and then we'll set them to the side over here in a window area where they can cool off okay so this is our little window area this is our little cooling area you want to have several towels laid out so let's tell you about the supplies we have we have plenty of jars never can have too many jars we have this pan and that is for sterilizing our jars and also putting our jar lids in and we'll talk about that a little bit more detail in a minute this is our pot that we're going to be blanching our tomatoes and will basically dip our Tomatoes down in this hot water and then we'll leave them in there for about 30 seconds we'll pull them back out and they will go into this pot here and then I'll pull the peelings off and I have a bucket down here that I'll be throwing all these goodies in and those are some tomatoes that weren't so good we'll throw all the goodies in the bucket and that'll go to the chickens here are our tomatoes wonderful red ripe tomatoes and some of them like this tomato they don't need to be washed other ones like this one it has a leaf kind of stuck to it so we'll go ahead and wash him take care of him really good now what we need to do we need to be picking out tomatoes that have rotten spots in them and that's a tomato that has a rotten spot and it goes in the chicken bucket we'll also need a pair of tongs for handling jars and we'll need a nice paring knife and guys I have never found a better paring knife than these Dexter paring knives so we'll be using that and we'll be using a magnet this is the little magnet and all this stuff you can get I'll post links to it this is a little magnet to pick up your jar lids just like that so let's talk about the jars that you should be using in the jars that you shouldn't be using for this job so you want to get the mason or the ball jars that are designed for home canning okay these jars can be used multiple times multiple multiple times some of these jars came from my grandmother and some of these jars came from my great grandmother's house so super duper awesome the things you don't want to use our jars like this things that you get like pickled okra and stuff like that in the grocery store these are a one-time use jar and they can get scratched or scored really easily with a utensil like a fork or something you're getting down in there to get your okra out you scratch it you put all your tomatoes in there you put it in the pressure canner or you put it in the water bath canner and it cracks and it wastes an entire jar of tomatoes do not use these jars now some people swear by them and they can use them but you're rolling the dice when you're using a jar that's not designed to be used multiple times all right now another tip on your jars you want to be sure that you inspect your jars very very well especially around the top edge if you look right there you'll see the chip there's a chip in this jar it is useless we can put honey in this jar but otherwise it's absolutely useless for canning it's not gonna get a good seal and it's just wasting your time so we either recycle or reuse it for honey so let's go into a little bit of science a little bit of detail here and you may not want all this detail but it's all good food for thought is the tomato you want to can a red ripe tomato perfectly ripened these are not the tomatoes you want to can these will not taste good you need to let them sit out on the counter and let them ripen until they look like this so when I pick this it looked like that it takes about four or five days sometimes a week where you set them on the counter until you get a good bunch of them that are red ripe if that garden is pumping out red ripe tomatoes you need to get them off the vine you need to start picking them as soon as they turn color there's a lot of schools of thought as to whether that takes away from the flavor and it absolutely when my experience does not take away from the flavor pick them when they start turning that way when it rains they don't explode and they will still taste wonderful okay lay them out on the counter have a spot in your kitchen and preserve these all right we've got our water hot in our big pot back here so that we can go ahead and start blanching tomatoes and blanching basically is heating up the outside edge of the tomato let me put this over here so what I mean by blanching the tomato is dropping it in that hot water for 30 seconds and pulling it out you don't want to cook the tomato you want to blanch the tomato you don't want to cook it because you will waste whatever cooks you want to cook it about two millimeters below the surface of the skin and that way when you get to working with the tomato the skin just goes whoop and it just pops right out and we'll just pop them right into the jars it's gonna be cool let's show you what we're doing Stoney Ridge farmer kitchen tip these are pot holders these are what you put flower pots on well we use these in our kitchen for putting hot pots and pans on so we can set them on the counter so we're going to take our sterilization pot and we're going to set them on these little pot holders they're made out of cork you can get them at Walmart or whatever this is what we use so we're going to set this guy to decide get him out of the way for safety sake and will slide forward our blanching pot now for blanching we're gonna get you in closer so we're gonna take the lid off of our blanching pot and we're just gonna take our tomatoes and we're gonna gently drop them over into this blanching pot and we want to do similar size Tomatoes all together we want to go fast with it so we gots to move we got to get done we got to get busy dropping these guys in there gently don't just drop them from way up here set them down in there gently and be smart about it okay we're about 30 seconds is all we want this water is probably a hundred and ninety degrees it's not quite boiling yet and we want to test one out I want to kind of grab it nope it's not ready absolutely not ready this one starting to seem a little bit ready get these guys nice and blanched actually gonna probably shouldn't have done that using a special little spoon for dipping these guys out so that the water drains right out of it okay this one is ready to rock all of them are ready to rock so let's set them out of here all right we don't have to be too awfully gentle with these guys right now we can get to rocking and rolling with them don't get too far ahead of yourself don't put all your tomatoes in one blanching cuz you'll cook them you won't to have time okay now for the sake of showing you how to do this I'm gonna make a mess really quickly we're going to take our first tomato and we're going to cut the tip off of it very very simply we're just going to cut right here and this is where having a nice sharp knife pays off we're gonna take that and it goes in the bucket here's our jar here's our blanched tomato perfectly blanched tomato slips right out of it spilling just like a sock right there so we'll get you a little better close-up of that but that's how you blanch them and that's how they're supposed to slip out you're gonna pack this jar as full as you can possibly get it and leave 1/2 inch of head head head room which means 1/2 inch at the top and here's the canning funnel and basically this guy just slips right into the jar and here's how we're gonna work this we're going to take our knife and we're going to either cut out the core the center part right here or we're going to cut off the tip of our Roma tomatoes and those are the ones that are kind of heart-shaped we're gonna drop them in our yuck bucket right here for our chickens and basically we're just going to get rocking with this as soon as we get these in we'll wipe off the tips of the jar at the end of the jar basically where the lid will seal to and we'll get rockin with getting them into the pressure canner and we'll give you a little more science behind that to a lot of detail right here but you're almost done what we're going to do is we're going to stick the knife down in here and we're going to take the core out of this tomato very very simple just like that this is what we'll do with every tomato okay I'm only going to show you one pop that core out take your finger dip it out make a mess we'll drop that core in here for the chickens then we'll take this and we'll squeeze it and it'll drop right into the jar awesome perfect once again with the tomato that's not a Roma tomato we're gonna go right along in here and we want to get all this mess off of here okay so that's the main goal all right we're going to get all that mess off get down in there get that hardcore out of there and take your finger pull em off in the yuck bucket then we'll take our tomato and you see how easy it's just perfectly blanched and it drops right into our jar and we push it down we're gonna pack these jars full now here's one of the heart-shaped kinda Roma tomatoes and you basically just take the tip slice it off just like so throw that down in the yuck bucket and go right to your jar and pop it right out boom done easy perfect you may not be this good your first time but don't worry keep practicing you'll have plenty of time to practice we want to pack this stuff down in here okay so what you want to do is you want to have something you can pack it down in with let me show you basically what I'm gonna use to pack them down in here it's just a big spoon okay be careful not to get any peelings in there if you can help it try not to have too many peelings in there and you also want to work all the bubbles out of your jar as best you can you take that big old spoon and you just kind of pack them down and again you're leaving about this much head room room room which means this much room at the top right here most of your canning kits will come with the gauge just like this and it has the numbers on there for a half an inch and basically we want to be exactly precise that's how much a half an inch is cool looks like we need one more tomato in here there we go nice perfect done set it to the side grab our next jar alright guys stick with me here we've shown you how to put the tomatoes in the jar we're also going to put one teaspoon of non-iodized salt canning salt pickling salt in here okay we probably should have put that in first but it's okay to put it in after the fact the next jars will probably put it in first now if you're using the water boiler method which is what's detailed in the ball blue bowl we would put 1/4 teaspoon of citric acid or 1 tablespoon of lemon juice like you buy at the store in the can but we're not using that method we're using a pressure canner and we don't need to go and put all that stuff in there we're just gonna use salt and tomatoes awesome another Stoney Ridge farmer kitchen tip you know you can buy salt a whole lot cheaper in bulk then you can buying little salt shakers so we buy big old things I saw and we keep these little containers this is from red grapefruit and I labeled it pickling salt ok pickling saw it and this is iodized regular sod this is for me and my wife to know what salt we need to put in our salt shakers and what salt we need to put in our canned goods all right I totally forgot I had my Bluetooth in my ear we don't need that so inside my pot that I sterilized in my jars I have my jar lids and I have that little magnet doohickey and you can reach down in to the warm water and the water is at about a hundred and sixty degrees and you get your lid okay you don't want to get it that way you want to get it the other way so we'll make sure we flip it over and I'll show you how we put the lids on our jars now this is our pressure cooker lid and this is an old-style pressure cooker it's a little different than newer ones you get may have a little meter on here or pressure gage on here or they may have a little thing that goes on here that you rotate for 5 10 or 15 pounds well what we have is the old-style and they still make them this style just not this color which is awesome so you set this guy on here that is your 5 pound jiggler okay this is 10 pounds this added to it makes 15 pounds and that's it that's your jiggler so what you want to do for what we're doing all intents and purposes we want to use the 5 pound little jiggler now we want to heat this water up we're going to put 2 quarts of water maybe a skosh more water in our pressure canner right here and then we'll set our jars down in at room temperature so all this will get warm together it's important that it all gets warm together so that the tomatoes properly seal in their jars now I'm going to take you over to the jars and I'm going to show you exactly how we put the lids on them and tighten them down and then once we get done with the pressure cooker we'll show you how we tighten them one more time at the end so stay tuned for that for sure we want to make sure that this pressure cooker it'll start jiggling it'll make a noise you don't want it to go you want it to go so in other words you want it to maintain five pounds of pressure you don't want fifty five pounds of pressure blowing up on this thing you want to maintain that five pounds of pressure so the difference in this and the regular water bath style of canning is that we use pressure and steam we're not covering the entire jar with water okay let's go over here and I'll show you how we apply our lids so we want to take each jar and pay careful attention to the lip on it and make sure that the lip is absolutely clean and free of debris okay you can see kind of made a mess of some of these but we'll make sure that that lip is absolutely spotless clean we're just taking a dry paper towel and we'll go around and do all these systematically so that we don't miss one make sure they're nice and clean okay guys I get excited during canning season it really makes me happy to put away all of my hard work this is such a bounty of tomatoes and all of these tomato plants were planted from seed super cool now we're over here to our jars sterilization area I'm going to reach in with my little magnet and I'm going to grab myself a lid just like so I'm gonna take my lid over here and I'm going to place it gently on my jar I'm gonna go ahead and get all the lids for all the jars and get those going one more time pick it up like that don't pick it up with the seal up and what we're trying to do by warming them up there's a rubber seal a rubber gasket around that and we want to warm that up so that it gets a good bite what we're gonna do here next is we're gonna put our lids on and we're gonna tighten them down not super duper gorilla tight but fairly tight as tight as we can get them my hand and and we'll stick them over here in the pressure canner so nice and snug and when we get them back out we'll give them another little tug guys if you set your jars your cool jars down in hot water if you've already preheated the water and you set your cool jars down in there you take a chance and bust in the bottom out of your jar that's why we let it all warm up together all right all of my lids are on nice and secure I'm gonna take my pressure cooker and I'm going to secure the top here and I'm gonna make sure my five pound weights on and I'm gonna turn the heat on to about a medium-high we want this thing to start jiggling and once it starts jiggling we set our timer for 10 minutes so it jiggles for 10 minutes 5 pounds of pressure for 10 minutes we let it naturally cool down then we take our jars out set them to the side when we take them out they'll still be bubbling and boiling they'll be pretty cool to see we'll let them cool down naturally and then we'll start the next batch so we stop jiggling and we're all done with the first canning here I'm gonna get my canning tongs and I'll pull my jars out real quick and show you what they look like so our little jiggler has stopped and our safety button has popped down so we're in good shape here no more steam no more worries we'll take this guy open there we go there we go we'll have some steam roll out so we want to be careful with that so we'll slide our jars out of here nice and gentle and that is awesome looks great it's fairly normal to have a little bit of juice or water down in the bottom of these but they look absolutely great kind of shake the bubbles out and then we'll show you how we tighten the lids down over here on the table we'll let them cool off so when we set these out we want them to be spaced apart enough to where they can cool comfortably cool and you'll hear these little lids you'll hear that think that noise that you just want to hear when they're sealing up good they're all kind of pooched out right now and that's cool that's okay so the final step here with our jars is we're gonna snuggle lids down just a little bit tighter and we'll hold them with a and we'll tighten them with a towel I'll show you just like so they will spew out okay you may hear this it's pretty tight go just like to Snug them down all the way along one more time just like that now we have seven more jars all set up here for our next canning our next round of canning but I don't need to show you that so guys I got to go I got to get busy we've got seven more jars to camp it is 8:30 at night I guess you know what I'll be doing till about 11 o'clock tonight thanks a lot for coming on the farm vlog today I appreciate you coming I hope you learned a little something about canning tomatoes today please subscribe to the channel check out more of…