Craftertaste Special: Tomatoes

Tomatoes. Aren't they delicious? I mean, compared to their fruit brethren I guess they're actually pretty disgusting. But as a vegetable, the tomato is king.

I prefer to eat them in their purest form: mashed up with sugar and salt in a little something we like to call "ketchup".

Every now and again though, I do eat them au naturel. In this form the tomato faces two main problems. One: its shelf life is significantly shorter than a ketchup packet. Two: it's much more difficult to spread the tomato on other delicious food stuffs (I.e. pizza, pasta, french fries) in its natural state. Especially if you're too lazy to make fresh tomato sauce for yourself (this guy [thumbs]).

My girlfriend's father has the solution. He explained to me that the tomatoes you buy in the store are garbage, chosen mostly for their ability to travel well and NOT for their flavor and texture. I concurred. Then he proceeded to tell me that we would be making jarred plum tomatoes in the traditional Italian style, using bushels of tomatoes fresh delivered from a nearby farm.

"In other words… we're making canned tomatoes? Like Hunts?" I asked. I received a look of disgust that I cannot translate into words. But if I could, it would say something like "there is something wrong with your generation."

So began my education on making Italian tomatoes. First we picked up the necessary (and deceptively heavy) equipment from a friend's basement. Then we swung by to see an older Italian gentleman who was clipping the grass, shirtless, on a riding lawnmower*. I'm not really sure if this was part of the tomato making process, but regardless he was a nice guy. Finally, we assembled the equipment alongside the previously delivered bushels of tomatoes and prepared for our day-long tomato making adventure.

If you don't have the patience to read the whole post, this cartoon should give you the highlights.

Ingredients:
6 bushels of plum tomatoes
Fresh basil leaves
About 140 1 liter mason jars
Blood
Sweat
Tears

Estimated time commitment: the entire day

Why does that cartoon look faded? I'm keeping it "rustica". That's Italian for rustic. I also messed up my usual method and this is was the only way I could save it. Just go with it!

The first stage of the tomato-ing process, I was told, consisted of unpacking the tomatoes from their crates and washing them off with a garden hose. We checked over every tomato by hand, rubbing off loose dirt and grime. A few of the tomatoes had growths and other deformities on them. These, I was told, we're perfectly usable after removing the affected portions with a paring knife. Suffice it to say that I was very generous with my knife strokes for the blighted tomatoes; mold should not be your secret ingredient!

After a good number of tomatoes had been washed, I started up the "cracking" station. I placed three very large pots on the stove and brought water in each to a boil. I then added tomatoes in batches and let them sit in the boiling water for about 10 minutes per batch before removing them with a slatted ladle. The result of their hot tub excursion is that the tomatoes begin separate from their skin, making them easier to peel in the coming step. See the cracks?

After frantically cracking as many tomatoes as possible, I ran batches of piping hot tomatoes outside to a picnic table covered with a table cloth. Here, a number of family members / friends who were convinced (read: coerced) to help out for the day proceeded to handle the piping hot tomatoes and remove the skins by hand. 

If you wait for them to cool off the skin becomes harder to remove, sooo... burning your hands on hot tomatoes it is! Which can have an effect on your disposition after six bushels.

But don't go throwing away the skins just yet! Send these through the tomato mill to squeeze every last ounce of juice and pulp out of them. If you're going to process so many plum tomatoes, you'd better make the most of it!

Next we combined the skin juice with the skinned tomatoes, mashing them up a bit by hand. Then we ladled the tomatoes into mason jars. A LOT of mason jars.

The basil leaf adds a hint of herbal goodness to each aliquot. After all of the tomato mush had been dispensed, we sealed the jars tightly with mason jar lids.

Finally, two extremely large pots were packed to the brim with the mason jars, wedged in tightly with towels to keep them from bouncing around. A hose was connected to a nearby hot water line and each pot was filled to cover the jars. Beneath the jars, huge burners were lit to bring each pot to a boil. Awesome.

But why? Heating the mason jars and allowing them to cool activates the vacuum seal on the mason jar lid. This way, you can keep your jars of fresh tomatoes on the shelf for years! Same red color, same great taste.

Close to being done, it was time to sit back, relax and listen to the soothing sound of tomatoes being boiled in extremely large pots.

We boiled the tomatoes for about 45 minutes, then killed the heat and let the pots cool overnight. The following day, we removed the cooled mason jars and arranged them artistically on the patio table. Final count brought us to over 130 jars!

I hope this batch lasts us until next year. It'll probably take that long for my hands to recover from skinning scalding hot tomatoes.

At least I got a small stash to call my own. I recently tried out some of the jarred goodness in a sauce on top of whole wheat penne. The verdict? Way better than Prego. Who knew!

Thanks to everyone who helped out for including me in a wonderful family tradition. Despite all of my complaining I can assure you that I had a great time!

Until next time, happy crafting!

*Note: Not literary exaggeration.