Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.

Twenty-two and a half pounds, to be precise (ish). That's how many green tomatoes I picked on Oct. 19 on a rainy day at the end of the growing season. Around 12-1/2 bigger tomatoes of various varieties from Roma to San Marzano to Black Prince to an heirloom yellow one, about 10 pounds of cherry and grape tomatoes. These plants have been prolific all summer long and I've already processed a lot of tomatoes.

What to do, what to do. 

A search yielded a number of options:

• Fermented Green Tomatoes: A comment on Reddit/Canning suggested these might resemble green olives, I assume in appearance rather than flavor.
• Pickled Green Tomatoes: Small Batch Pickled Green Tomatoes by Food in Jars, Pickled Green Tomatoes by Creative Canning with several spice options; Crunchy Pickled Green Tomatoes by Brooklyn Farm Girl, a quick pickle version that will need to be kept refrigerated so nope, not good for lots and lots of tomatoes; Pickled Sweet Green Tomatoes by National Center for Home Food Preservation
• Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney from Brooklyn Farm Girl: I still have around 3 gallons of tomatillos from last October's final harvest and this would be a way of using them up. But do I really want to add any volume at all to 22-1/2 pounds of green tomatoes?!?!
• Relish: Not my favorite condiment 
• Salsa and some other ideas, but that salsa recipe reads a lot like salsa verde and I still have some of that left from last year along with all those tomatilloes
• Cake?! : Not a recipe for long-term preservation, but interesting
• Green Tomato Ketchup: I know from experience this will take for-absolutely-ever to cook down but I have so many tomatoes I'm tempted to try it out, and maybe it could work in a slow cooker. Several recipe options: Mamta Gupta's Green Tomato Ketchup; Green Tomato Ketchup by From the Larder (which calls for British Mixed Spice and she kindly includes the recipe for that; it sounds great for oatmeal, quick breads, baking, other uses); a 1940s Green Tomato Recipe from Gourmet; a Quebec Green Tomato Recipe posted on Reddit that says to soak the tomatoes and celery in salted water overnight so that would mean planning ahead and a quantity of "20-25 green tomatoes" with no reference to either weight or volume so that's a bit vague; a Green Tomato Recipe on Spruce Eats; and then there's the seasoning mix suggested in my edition of The Joy of Cooking, copyright 1975 (which matters because they changed things for more recent editions) for Tomato Catsup that could presumably work in a green tomato ketchup, although I'm surprised they didn't have a recipe involving green tomatoes. Looking for more versions of the Quebecois recipe, I learned that for some people, particularly in the American South, a reference to Green Tomato Ketchup labels something that's more of a chutney or even chow-chow, which I made last year with some of my green tomatoes and which includes cabbage as an ingredient. If I go this route I'm going to make a smooth ketchup/catsup more similar to the red kind in texture.
• Dehydrated Green Tomatoes: I just loaned out my dehydrator to a friend who needs to process 50-60 pounds of chantarelles so this won't work for me, but something to bear in mind for the future. Drying Green Tomatoes by Healthy Canning mentions reconstituting them as “Pomodori verdi secchi in olio di oliva”, which sounds good. Good discussion on Garden Web of drying green tomatoes and other produce with some tips and ideas for use. Video on slicing them with a mandoline and making "chips" with a bit of sugar and salt.
• I could throw them in the freezer until I decide what to do with them, or can them plain for future reincarnation mid-winter when I want to fill the house with the scents of summer.

Last year I'd made green tomato chutney and that was delicious. I have several kinds of chutneys already, although I'm never opposed to having more on hand. Thanks to Mamta Gupta  I learned that the word "chutney" comes from the Hindi word Chatni, "a tangy and spicy sauce/paste that makes you smack your lips." Yes indeedy.

Lip-smackin' goodness, here I come. The list of recipes I worked from to develop mine below, with a note on whether it includes a specific element beyond green tomatoes and onions:

• Green Tomato Chutney with apples, Food.com
• Green Tomato Chutney with apples, Blue Dot Living
• Green Tomato Chutney with apples and green bell peppers,  Culinaria Eugenius (wildlly optimistic cook time here; don't believe it)
• Green Tomato Chutney, Food in Jars
• Spicy Heirloom Tomato Chutney recipe, Food in Jars
•  Green Tomato Chutney, Swasthi's Recipes
• Green Tomato Recipe, Mamta's Kitchen
• Easy Green Tomato Chutney, Lovely Greens

Handy tools: My food processor with the sharp blade serves as one of the key tools for dealing with this many tomatoes and associated ingredients. I picked this little trick up from a ripe tomato chutney recipe and realized I'd been doing a ton of unnecessary hand slicing and dicing for things destined to go into a pan and break down as they cooked. Integrity in hand-crafted artisanal slicing and dicing truly not required.

Another trick I came up with on my own: Using my strawberry capping tool to nip the stems off the tops of tomatoes. I don't core tomatoes and the little bit of skin at the top where the stem attached softens in cooking so I'm not worried about making sure I get every last bit out.

Spices: Most of the recipes I found had fairly low key (boring) spice combinations, not nearly as inspiring as the ones for chutneys made with ripe tomatoes and other ingredients. Dried spices don't affect canning safety so I looked up a few chutney recipes like this Green Tomato Chutney from Swasthi's Recipes (not designed for canning) and this Green Tomato Recipe from Mamta's Kitchen that provided a lot more inspiration. The Food in Jars recipe was also seasoned in a more interesting way than others, one of which just offered up chili powder and salt. Excuse me, do you know where chutneys come from and what makes them delicious??

This looks like a long list of spices and it is. My garam masala was a bit old so I reinforced it with some of the spices that are typical ingredients in this tasty spice blend. You could certainly start with just the seasonings from any of the recipes linked above and decide for yourself what to increase or add.

Fruit: For some reason, several of the recipes didn't call for raisins, which I 100% associate with chutney. Food.com was the exception here. I like to use dried cranberries for some or all of these, and this time I also went for some dried dates. (Yes, home botanists, tomato is also a fruit.)

Quantities and ratios: Quantities can be adjusted based on tomatoes as the core ingredient, bearing in mind that bigger quantities take a lot longer to cook down. 

The ratios were very different between a couple of sources. For comparison:

• Food.com: Tomatoes 10 lbs., Apples 3 lbs., Onions 3 lbs., Raisins 1 lb., Brown Sugar 1.5 lbs, Vinegar 1 qt.
• Culinaria Eugenius adaptation of Ball: Tomatoes 16 cups, Apples 16 cups, Onions 3 medium (resulting in maybe ~3 cups?), Bell Peppers 3 medium (~3 cups?), Brown Sugar 6 cups, Vinegar 4 cups
• Food in Jars: Tomatoes 6 cups, Onions 1-1/4 cups, Brown Sugar 1-1/2 cups, Vinegar 1 cup
• Lovely Greens: Tomatoes 1 kg. or ~6 cups, Onion 1 kg or ~6 cups, Brown Sugar 500 grams or ~2.5 cups, Vinegar 1 liter or ~1 qt.

Clearly a somewhat flexible set of proportions for the tomatoes, onions, and apples. Smashing all these together I decided this would have to be a taste-and-adjust on proportions to get the right level of tanginess across tomatoes/onions/apples/peppers, building on the ones from Food in Jars and Culinaria Eugenius for sugar and vinegar. 

Sugar and vinegar: Sugar levels are mostly for flavor since this isn't a jam in search of pectin setting qualities, vinegar is for food safety, and both of the recipes I relied on have a ratio of sugar 1.5 to vinegar 1. I started with 4 cups of vinegar, 4 cups of sugar, so I could taste and adjust the sweetness factor.

I also had to deal with the quantities I had available to me. For apples I used some of those I canned earlier this year.

Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe

Read this first: Start this recipe early in the day when you have time to tend it and stir often. 

Read this too: Wear an oven mitt when you stir the pot. The mixture will tend to splatter but you can't keep a lid on it or it won't cook down the way it needs to. Hot tomato is very very hot and will burn you. It may look tame, then when you start to stir and loosen the solids the liquid part will suddenly boil up like wild and throw hot tomato droplets at you. Every. Time. You. Stir. Ask me how I know.

This volume completely filled my biggest stockpot. It's a lot.

• Tomatoes: 16 cups chopped
• This was the output from around 6 pounds, whirled briefly in a food processor to create a diced size or chopped by hand if you want to do this the hard way. No need to remove skins.
• Onions: ~7 cups, finely chopped
• For me this was output from 4 truly giant yellow onions, close to 3 pounds, also whirled in the food processor but not until reduced to onion paste.
• Apples: 4 cups home-canned with the juice they were canned in
• No need to chop as these will fall apart into applesauce. If you start with whole apples then yes, reduce to dice. Your call on whether to peel or not.
• Green bell peppers: 4 cups finely chopped, approx. 1-1/2 pounds, output from 3 really giant ones
• You could substitute hotter peppers for some of this if that meets with your family's Scoville settings
• Dried fruits: 2 cups, chopped if they're big to create pieces the size of raisins
• I used dried cranberries and dates
• Optional: Crystallized ginger: 1/2 cup, chopped fine, mostly because I had some left from earlier recipes like my version of Chai Ginger Apple Butter
• Optional: 2-4 T. chopped mild to hot peppers
• Vinegar: 4 cups of a vinegar with 5% acidity
• I used 2 cups each of red wine vinegar and white wine vinegar; you could use apple cider vinegar
• Brown sugar: 4-1/2 cups
• Taste and adjust when the volume has cooked down a bit. I started with 4 cups and added the additional 1/2 cup later.
• Garlic: 8 cloves, crushed, grated, or chopped fine
• Feel free to add more!
• Salt: 2 T.
• Garam masala: 1-1/2 T.
• Curry powder: 2-1/2 T.
• Powdered hot mustard: 1-1/2 T.
• Ground black pepper: 2 t.
• Crushed red pepper: 1-1/2 t.
• Adjust this amount for the heat level you want
• Cumin: 1 t.
• Powdered ginger: 1/2 t.
• Cinnamon: 1/2 t.
• Coriander: 1/2 t.
• Cardamom: 1/2 t.
• Cayenne pepper: Pinch or two, maybe a dash
• Nutmeg: Dash

Stir all ingredients together in a large non-reactive stockpot, or divide between two smaller pots so it can cook down a bit more quickly. 

Bring to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, stirring often, at a simmer over medium-low heat 2-3 hours or more, or until it has reduced by approximately half. Wear that oven mitt to stir! Be sure to stir completely from the bottom and scrape across the entire bottom of the pot to avoid any scorching of the ingredients.

It will thicken and eventually be scoopable, more like jam than soup. If you get tired of waiting for that phase and it's reasonably thick with a fair amount of the liquid cooked off, no one can stop you from canning it at that stage. I don't think mine had truly reduced by half when I was four hours or more into the cook time but it was late and I was tired so into the canner it went.

When you start seeing it thickening enough that you think this marathon may finally end, prep for hot water canning. Get your canning kettle started toward boiling, sterilize the jars in an oven at 250 degrees for at least 10 minutes, and warm the jar lids in hot water. For more details on hot water bath canning consult the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Process quarter-pints and half-pints 15 minutes and let sit for 5 in the rack above the hot water before removing to a baking rack covered with a towel.

This was my first time trying out one-piece canning lids, following instructions from Food in Jars. They look so nice! And they pinged just fine, some of them before I even took the jars out of the canning kettle, which is always a good sign of lid quality. I got these from Fillmore Container and they're going to become my standard. Much more attractive when I gift a jar to someone, with more utility.

My yield from quantities above: 16 half-pints, 14 quarter-pints. 

That's probably enough chutney considering I already have zucchini chutney, apple chutney, blackberry chutney, and a couple of jars of last year's green tomato chutney on hand. I'll eat it with cheese on crackers, spread it on sandwiches, maybe put it on scrambled eggs.

As I said, lip smackin'!

And I still have pounds and pounds of green tomatoes.

I like putting a tiny illustration representing the contents on my canning jar labels. This helps me find things at a glance when I'm looking at my garage shelves packed with food in jars.

I like putting a tiny illustration representing the contents on my canning jar labels. This helps me find things at a glance when I'm looking at my garage shelves packed with food in jars.