Tomato Jammin'

Today's theme song: Bob Marley and the Wailers, "Jamming."

What to do with home-grown tomatoes that's more interesting than making canned tomatoes that you can buy from the store? Tomato jam, that's what. (I do lots of things with tomatoes, actually, but never, ever ketchup.)

For the past three years I've made the Food In Jars Smoky Spicy Skillet Tomato Jam, in much larger quantities than her recipe. I really love it, so much so that I still have some left from last year. So this year's tomato crop went into two other recipes.

Orange Tomato Jam: Yield from 10 cups of chopped tomatoes: 4 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints.

A couple of years ago I created Citrus Tomato Marmalade because the recipe title had made me think something called Orange Tomato Jam must surely have a citrus element. I didn't grow enough orange tomatoes that year to make an orange tomato jam. The marmalade turned out pretty good, although it was super sweet.

This year, though, my word, the Orange Brandywine! (A Hobbitish name, that.) Tomatoes bigger than my hand and lots of them. I ate plenty and stashed a bunch more in the freezer along with Hillbilly, an orange tomato with red shoulders.

When I tasted this jam as it reached the early jammy stage, I felt the spices needed a bit of oomphing up, possibly because I used ginger paste from a tube rather than freshly grated. Added 1/2 t. paprika and ~1 t. ginger paste. That brought it up to Resident Taste Tester-approved levels of a gentle heat. So I added another 1/8 t. cayenne. 

Tomato Jam: Yield from around 6 pounds of tomatoes, some with a firmer flesh than others: 4 half-pints, 10 quarter-pints, and a couple of tablespoons left over so guess I'll just have to have that with some cheese and crackers.

This recipe from Serious Eats uses cumin, cinnamon, and crushed red pepper for its seasoning. I ran out of crushed red pepper flakes, but luckily cayenne pepper is a good substitute. Not 1:1 though! More like 1/2:1 cayenne:crushed red pepper, then taste and adjust. As it approached the jammy stage I tasted and decided I want a bit more cumin presence. I added 1/4 t., then another 1/4 t., then figured I'd better stop since I wasn't going for a straight-up Mexican flavor. I'd forgotten I made it back in 2024. Since each year I grow a slightly different mix of tomatoes, each year's jam will be its own taste sensation.

The eternal tomato skins question: To remove completely or do something else? 

They don't "dissolve into the jam," as a different tomato jam recipe promised. They show up as little shreds. I don't mind them; they can't be more fibrous than blackberry seeds. They're not that aesthetically pleasing, though.

For the orange tomatoes I took a chance and learned that indeed, their skins don't melt. I kept my kitchen scissors handy and kept snipping longer shreds into smaller bits as they surfaced in the pot.

For the red tomatoes I took a different approach. I had (yet again) not blanched and removed skins as I threw tomatoes in the freezer in the peak harvest season. If I'd taken the skins off when they were fresh I could have tried making tomato powder. I didn't, though.

The skins slide off pretty easily after freezing for most tomato varieties, although I learned the giant meaty Amish red tomatoes I grew this year like to hold onto their skins even after freezing. 

I slid off as many as I could and threw them in the food processor for some serious smashing. Out of around 6 pounds of tomatoes this yielded nearly two cups of tomato-y paste, well worth the effort to extract all possible flavor from the fruit.

I also used the food processor to pulse the fresh tomatoes and those Amish (which really hold up beautifully to freezing!). The frozen San Marzano and Black Prince pretty much fell apart so they were jam-ready right out of the freezer. Yes, recipes refer to chopped tomatoes. In the past I've spent a long time at the chopping board with a knife. Then I realized I was putting a lot of care into chopping things that were going to cook down and lose their shape. You know what a food processor does, used carefully with pulses? It chops tomatoes.

Related reading and recipes

• Green Tomato Caponata Recipe
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup 
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Canstravaganza 2025
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment

Green Tomato Caponata Recipe

I realized/rediscovered that I had around 7 pounds of frozen green tomatoes left from last year's harvest. (This is what happens when your garage holds both a full-sized freezer and the old fridge with a freezer space you don't look into very often.)

I'm still more than fully stocked up with green tomato chutney and have full confidence that I'll end up with more green tomatoes at the end of this year's gardening. Last year I experimented with a chutney sauce and (unsuccessfullly) with green tomato ketchups (never again!).

This year it's caponata. I've made this before when I ended up with eggplant from a Buy Nothing source. It's delicious on pasta, rice, or bread as a chunky dip.

Sources: Two recipes, one not designed for canning that's essentially a caponata pickle, one that calls for ripe tomatoes and is tested for canning, made with different quantities of tomatoes.

• Pickled Green Tomatoes, Food in Jars: 3 lbs. green tomatoes
• Caponata Sauce, Ball Canning: 4 lbs. ripe tomatoes

Things I did:

• Increased the sugar the Ball recipe called for because I was using green tomatoes instead of ripe. For 7 lbs. of green tomatoes I used 3 T. brown sugar, 4 T. white sugar, basically 1 T. per pound/cup of tomatoes.
• Working with frozen tomatoes, most of them cherry or grape size, I gave up on the idea of removing the skins. I know, I know, you're supposed to take them off. 
• Pro tip/note to self: In future freezing frenzy at the end of a long growing season, blanch tomatoes and pull the skins off, then chop before freezing. You'll thank yourself.
• I wanted the balsamic of the pickle recipe. I checked my (store brand) balsamic and it's 6% acidity. In the step where I sauteed onion, bell pepper, and celery, I used 1/4 c. balsamic in place of the 1/4 c. water the Ball recipe calls for. I honestly don't know if the flavor came through, given the strong flavors of all the other ingredients.
• Added a sprinkle of red chili pepper flakes, then another one. This honestly could be oomphed more.
• I used the green Castelvetrano olives but I don't honestly love olives even though I cook with olive oil, so I reduced the amount. You do you.

(Green) Tomato Caponata 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prep a roasting pan by spraying or brushing it lightly with oil. Prep your canning jars.

• Green tomatoes: 7 pounds, around 7 cups after smashing in the food processor
• Feel free to use ripe tomatoes! If you do, reduce the sugar to 2 T.
• Eggplant: 2 small ones, about 2 lb (1 kg) total, stemmed and quartered lengthwise
• Sweet red peppers: 2, seeded and halved, or use 3 jars of roasted red peppers
• Onions: 2 large, diced
• Celery: 2-3 ribs, diced
• Garlic: 6 cloves, minced or crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
• Water or balsamic vinegar: 1/4 cup for sauteeing step
• Olives: Castelvetrano green olives or kalamata black olives, pitted and chopped, 1/2 cup up to 1-1/2 cups
• Capers: 1/2 cup, drained
• Salt: 1-1/2 T.
• Black pepper: 1 T.
• Red pepper flakes: 1/4 t., or more to taste
• Red wine vinegar, or another vinegar 5% acidity or greater: 1 cup
• Brown sugar: 3 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes; feel free to start with less sugar of either variety and adjust to your taste)
• White sugar:  4 T. (1 T. if using ripe tomatoes)

Oven roasting

Roast tomatoes, eggplants, and red peppers skin side up for 25-30 minutes, until skins begin to char. Remove and let cool until you can handle them without burning yourself. Remove skins. Chop tomatoes and set aside in one bowl. Chop peppers and scoop eggplants from skin (or peel skin from eggplant, whichever way you do it) and set those aside in another bowl.

Get the canning water heating and prep your jars: Depending on the size of your canning pot you may want to start it warming while the veggies are roasting. 

Once the vegetables are out of the oven, reduce heat to 200 degrees and put your jars in there on a roasting pan or cookie sheet to sterilize them.

Sauteeing

In a nonreactive pan or Dutch oven big enough to hold all the ingredients, saute the diced onions and garlic in 1/4 cup water or balsamic vinegar until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. At about 8 minutes in, add the garlic (which can burn if you put it in too early).

Combining and cooking

Add the tomatoes and all remaining ingredients, except eggplant and peppers. Simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently (tomato can burn quickly), until slightly thickened, about 20 minutes. 

Taste and adjust seasonings; maybe you want a bit more salt or more red chili flakes. 

Stir in eggplant and peppers and cook an additional 5 minutes.

Canning

By now your big kettle of water is boiling and your jars are sterilized. Fill jars, leaving a 1/4 inch air space. Wipe rims with a damp paper towel. Dip lids in the boiling water and put them on the jars, adjusting to fingertip tight. 

Process for 35 minutes. When you take them out, set them on a towel on top of a cookie rack and wait for that satisfying ping/pop.

For full details on canning how-to, go to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Yield: 5 pints, 7 half-pints

Related reading and recipes

• Cherry Cherry Good: Pickled Cherries and Chocolate Cherry Jam
• Apple Mint Jelly, No Pectin Needed
• Mixed Citrus Ginger Marmalade Take 2
• Spiced Apple Butter Recipe 
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup 
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples 
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe 
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears! 
• Future Marmalade 
• Vegan Cranberry Caramelized Red Onion Orange Chutney Recipe Experimentation 
• "Sweet Harvest" 
• All my posts about food, gardening, and the environment

Canstravaganza 2025

Food in Jars blogger Marisa was holding a canning challenge that started in January. I happened across it after I'd already inadvertently completed the February assignments: frozen fruit and freezer excavation. I love that she includes a community-building item in each month. She also notes that this is all in fun and we should feel free to mix things up. I can say that I did at least one of the two challenges for each month at some point during the year, just not necessarily in the month she listed them.

January

• Food in Jars challenge: Root vegetables and brassicas. I didn't check this box. I've made banh mi mix in the past (shredded daikon and carrot in vinegar) and it lasts forever in the fridge so I'll come back to this at some point. Community-building assignment: Share a jar. Definitely did that; I took jars to meetings and gave them to friends. That happens just about every month, actually.

February

• Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
• Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
• Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.
• The Food in Jars challenge was using frozen fruit, the community challenge was freezer excavation. For me, that came up when the freezer defrosted later this year. But I did make all of this month's jams from berries and fruits I'd harvested last year and stored in the freezer.

March

Working with green tomatoes frozen in 2024, 12 pounds of tomatillos frozen in 2023, I made:

• Tomatillo Lime Jalapeño Jam: 8 half-pints, 12 quarter-pints. I added 3 jalapeños to the recipe, wanting it to have a bit of heat because that felt like a fit.
• Green Tomato/Tomatillo Chutney: 12 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I linked to the recipe although I think in future I'll use my own Green Tomato Chutney recipe whether I'm using green tomatoes on their own or mixed with tomatillos. I can attest that the spicing mix in that is really, really good.
• Food in Jars challenge: Make a mix. I didn't make a mix in the sense of a muffin mix or salad, but I did mix green tomatoes and tomatillos. Community challenge, contribute to a community fridge or pantry. I think we did drop something off at the food shelves by the community garden on Yew, and I gave away some herbs when I had more than I could use later in the year.

April

• No canning, but the Food in Jars community challenge was to plant something and I did that. The canning challenge was herbs and alliums. I collect and dry herbs when the pots cry out for harvesting, so that happens when it happens.

May

• No canning. Food in Jars challenge was berries. Mine are still growing at this point. The community challenge was to learn from a friend. I swap canning recipes with my friend Stefanie' we have different pickled cherry recipes and I like mine.

June

• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries,: 26 half-pints (I'm not messing around this year. It took a great deal of discipline to stretch last year's cherries to this spring!)
• Food in Jars challenge: Jam. I cover that in other months. The community challenge was to attend a potluck. Our neighborhood potluck is in August and I went to that.

July

• Tayberry Rhubarb Jam: 9 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Food in Jars challenge: Pickles, and I made those pickled cherries in June. Community challenge, support a local farmer or grower. I do that with regular trips to the Olympia Farmers' Market, and I buy eggs from the "farmette" stand down the street.

August

• Apple Cardamom Rosemary Jam: 4 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints. Read my notes on seasoning adjustments in my piece on making lots of use of apples
• Froze 8 pounds of sliced apples for future apple-pear butter; the apples are ready ahead of pears this year
• Food in Jars challenge: Sauces, which I'd thought I would make this year. I ended up doing this in November when I experimented with ketchup (never again!) and ended up making a chutney sauce. The community challenge was to gather or glean, and this time of year I'm picking blackberries. I also get apples as they ripen from a couple of publicly located trees.

September

• Last September was a canning frenzy. This September wasn't. I went on a two-week vacation starting Sept. 27 and needed to get things done to be ready for that.
• Food in Jars challenge: Condiments, and host a swap. I did the ketchup effort in November. A canning swap sounds like a fun idea; maybe I'll organize that one of these years.

October

• Also not a canning month, but the "October Surprise" of a defrosted freezer guaranteed I'd be canning in November.
• Food in Jars challenge: Drying and dehydration. I did that back in February with fruit leather, and over the course of the summer I harvested and dried some of the herbs I grow. Community challenge, share your knowledge. I write blog posts to capture and share my recipe explorations so check, did that.

November

• Blackberry Jelly: 15 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints.
• Tayberry Jam: The tried and true Chef Heidi Fink recipe I used last year. 
• Sour Cherry Amaretto Jam: I used the no-pectin sour cherry jam recipe from Sourdough Brandon, enhanced by the amaretto suggestion in the recipe from DishNTheKitchen.
• "Razzbuzzy Jam": 7 quarter-pints. Followed the Classic Raspberry Jam and stirred in 3 T. of raspberry liqueur. Not very buzzy, but tasty!
• Spiced Blueberry Jam: 7 quarter-pints.
• Smoky Spicy Tomato Jam: 3  half-pints, 11 quarter-pints. This Food in Jars is on repeat from last year and it's my go-to.
• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.
• Salted Caramel Pear Butter: 2 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints
• Cranberry Orange Jam with Crystallized Ginger: 3 half-pints, 13 quarter-pints
• Read my comments on the Serious Eats site. Allow for more cook time to get softened citrus and cranberries. Try reducing the sugar a bit. You don't need pectin.
• This is also the point in the year when I start thinking I should have put up more half-pints, ordered more quarter-pint jars, or both! I like the quarter-pint size for gifts.
• Spiced Apple Butter: 4 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints, 1 6-oz jar, an experiment in reusing a commercial jar and lid that went into the refrigerator because I wasn't confident about the seal.
• Food in Jars challenge: Apples. Yep, got that covered. Community challenge, barter with a friend or neighbor. I do a lot in our Buy Nothing group, both giving and receiving. That space doesn't permit bartering but it feels as if it's in the general spirit.

December

• Food in Jars challenge: Use it up! Is she kidding? I make far too much to use it up in a year! Community challenge, bake for others. Yep, did that.

Not the blowout year that 2024 was, but then I still have jars of product from that year on the shelves. Anyone want some jam? Chutney? Green tomato sauce? Anyone? And I did actually end up hitting the mark on the Food in Jars challenge, just in different months.

Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce

I may have noted recently that I don't think green tomato ketchup is worth the effort.

Also noted: Large quantity (~6 pounds) of green tomatoes plus chopped onions plus canned apples, all prepped and in the fridge under the assumption that I'd be making another ketchup recipe.

Third note to file: Lots of green tomato chutney and green tomato/tomatillo chutney already on hand in all their chunky goodness from last year and earlier this year.

Hence the thought experiment: What if I followed a chutney recipe but then blended it to make it smooth like ketchup? I should have some pretty screamin' awesome sweet/tangy sauce that would be great with fries, tofu, on oven-baked yams, maybe over rice, with cheese on crackers if it wasn't too runny to sit there, blend with yogurt to make an interesting dip. Many possible uses! Although not a ketchup! (And yes, blended green chutney sauce looks quite a lot like split pea soup.)

I give quantities as if you had diced or chopped things. I heartily endorse throwing ingredients for this into the food processor and whirling them up to save time. You're going to be pureeing and smooshing to get the lumps out anyway.

This makes a big batch! I'd already committed myself with the earlier prep. This could be cut in half with proportionate adjustments to everything. Cook time will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

Inspirations

• Green Tomato Ketchup recipe by From the Larder
• My own Green Tomato Apple Chutney Recipe, developed last year
• Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup, which was the winner of the two recipes I tried last weekend

Wet ingredients

• Green tomatoes: ~6-8 cups, yield from ~6 pounds
• Yellow or white onion: 1-1/2 cups, diced
• Apple: 2 cups, diced, canned, or even applesauce if that's what you have
• Green bell pepper (or another sweet bell pepper color if that's what you have): 1 whole pepper, diced
• Dried fruit: 1 cup of whatever turns your cranks. I like a combination of dates and dried cranberries
• Vinegar: 1 cup. Malt or apple cider vinegar preferred; white vinegar will be sharper; red or white wine vinegar is fine. Just needs to be labeled 5% acidity.
• Brown sugar: 1-1/2 cups. OK to substitute white sugar if that's what you have
• Green or red chilis, optional: 1-2, diced, if you want to add some fresh chili heat. Substitute 1-2 t. crushed red pepper, tasting and adjusting for your heat preference as the recipe cooks down
• 1 T. fresh grated ginger, or ginger paste from a tube (so handy!)
• 4-5 garlic cloves, crushed, or 1 T. garlic paste from a tube
• Optional: 1-1/2 T. vegan Worcestershire sauce, if available. Regular is fine if you don't have vegan, but then you should label this for any gift recipients who might prefer vegan
• Optional if you want a thinner sauce: 1/2 c. sherry, cooking sherry, or something you routinely substitute for these (apple cider or apple juice could work here)

Dry ingredients/Seasonings
Stir the dry spices together in a small bowl, then add to the wet ingredients. Yes, yes, you can absolutely dump the measurements straight into the sauce without mixing them first, but combining them first gives you a better distribution in the liquid than if you end up with a surprise clump of ground ginger.

• 1 T. fennel seeds, whirled in a coffee grinder or pounded with a mortar and pestle
• 1 T. ground mustard
• 1 T. salt
• 2 t. ground cardamom
• 2 t. ground black pepper
• 1 t. smoked paprika
• 1 t. cinnamon
• 1 t. ground cardamom
• 1 t. ground ginger (or increase fresh ginger above)
• 1/8 t. nutmeg
• 1/8 t. cloves

Put all ingredients except for the optional sherry or apple juice in one big stockpot (takes longer) or divide across two pans, preferably wide saucepans or Dutch ovens with plenty of surface for evaporation of the liquids.

Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a rapid simmer/low boil, and cook, stirring often, for around 60-90 minutes. Tomatoes spit when they boil so wear mitts, pay attention. Don't cover the pans; the goal here is some evaporation. Frequent stirring is essential to prevent some of the sauce burning to the bottom of the pan. Ask me how I know.

At 60-90 minutes the vegetables may not be entirely soft yet. Taste the seasonings and oomph up flavor notes you'd like to have a bit more of. Go carefully here, maybe 1/4 t. or 1/2 t. at a time if it's something that could end up overpowering.

Continue to cook until everything is soft enough to blend. I tried my immersion blender first, then went to the regular blender. Be careful blending hot liquids. Put in less than half the container's capacity, have the lid cracked open a tiny bit to let steam out, start on a low pulse and step it up as the contents puree and liquify.

Return to the kettle and cook a bit longer to reach the consistency you want. This is ready to can now, though. 

If it's thicker than you want and you'd like a more pourable sauce, add 1/2 cup of sherry (idea borrowed from the Creative Canning recipe linked above), apple juice or apple cider, and cook another 5 minutes or so.

Follow safe canning practices from the National Center on Home Food Preservation. Process 15 minutes at full boil.

Yield will vary depending on how juicy your tomatoes are. My yield: 8 half-pints, 11 quarter-pints.

Related reading and recipes

• In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

In Which I Say Never Again to Making Ketchup

I knew this. I knew this. I'd made a batch of homemade tomato ketchup years and years ago in Spokane and learned just how very, very long it takes to cook down. (Why specify "tomato" ketchup? Because, as I learned from The Joy of Cooking, whether you call it ketchup or catsup it's any savory smooth vegetable sauce. Mushroom Ketchup? It's a thing.)

But oops, I did it again. Had a lot of green tomatoes and remembered last year's idea of making green tomato ketchup. I'd even rounded up the recipes. And I still have plenty of my beloved green tomato chutney on hand, supplemented by some green tomato/tomatillo chutney that's a bit sharper, but still good. 

Last year I tried making the dehydrated seasoned green tomatoes linked in that same post. Blech. And we'd been saying we'd like to have ketchup on hand without ever actually getting around to buying any. I can fix this!

Sunday I headed out to the yard to pick the many, many green tomatoes left and do a bit of cleanup of the raised beds. Since I started my seed snail 'speriment a bit late, the Mortgage Lifter heirloom tomatoes hadn't had enough time to ripen. They're huge and beautiful and I'll be starting those seeds earlier in 2026 so I get the payoff in ripe red tomatoes.

So, yeah, around 24 pounds or so of green tomatoes.

Brilliant idea: Make batches of three different recipes in a head to head taste contest, then use the last batch of tomatoes to double down on the winner.

Dear Reader, this is not how I'll ever spend another Sunday.

I got through two of the three recipes. Neither of them makes my heart beat faster. One was the winner with Sweet Hubs. Fortunately, that was the batch that had more tomatoes based on the recipe's proportions. I added more sugar to both recipes. Neither of them is a giftable product, which is my yardstick for success.

And the labor! So many steps. So many. The two recipes used two different approaches, too.

Mamta's Kitchen Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook the tomatoes, onions and garlic until soft, which didn't take nearly as long as the four-hour Creative Canning recipe. Put through a food mill, then through a sieve to get the smooth sauce consistency, then cook with spices, vinegar and sugar. This batch had a smaller quantity of tomatoes. I doubled it to 2 kg and was able to fit into my deep saucepan. I normally wouldn't double an untried recipe but I had so, so many green tomatoes and the spice mix sounded really good. Garam masala, mustard, and more.

The recipe indicated that 1 kg of tomatoes would produce around 2 liters of sauce before adding spices etc. My tomatoes must have been super juicy, as I started with 2 kg and ended up with not quite that 2-liter mark. I seasoned based on volume produced, not volume I started with. I added more spices after tasting; mine are getting old, I know.

Yield from all of that: 2 half-pints, 1 quarter-pint.

Creative Canning Green Tomato Ketchup: Cook everything everywhere all at once for a long, long time (four hours), stirring frequently so it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. This started with 6 pounds of tomatoes so I used my Dutch oven. I'd already done the food mill + sieve steps for the Mamta recipe. This one called for pureeing ingredients in a blender, then putting it through a sieve. Much easier than the (manual) food mill process. I'd started with more tomatoes so it isn't a completely parallel comparison but I know I threw a lot more tomato skins/seeds/solids into the compost with Mamta's recipe than with this one.

This one was sweetened with honey. I added another cup of sugar after tasting (one-half cup at a time). It came out the flavor winner and was a much brighter green color.

Yield: 6 half-pints.

If I were making either of these again, which I will not be doing, I'd use the blender + sieve technique from Creative Canning. I might use the cooking approach from Mamta's because it was so much faster, but then again that might be a function of the tomato quantity. 

I couldn't tell you whether having the seasonings in from the beginning can be credited with the better flavor of the Creative Canning approach. I'd actually think it would be the opposite because seasonings added too early can disappear a bit. Mamta's recipe made the point that sugar and salt both darken the end result, hence adding them in at the end, but the spice profile with several brown spices and blends meant hers was the darker brown sauce anyway.

Another lesson learned: I had purchased cute little 8-ounce stout bottles from Fillmore Container, planning to bottle whatever sauces I might make this year as a change of pace from chutney. But the ketchup was thick enough that it wouldn't pour easily out of the bottle and I realized it would be far easier to can it in my standard jars. I'll use those bottles for something runnier. 

In a side note, I couldn't find instructions for headspace with that smaller mouth, which worries me. Need enough air to suck out for the vacuum, not something that creates so much pressure the bottle gives way in the kettle. The functional headspace with a much smaller circumference is obviously less so I think I need to do the geometry calculation to figure out how much headspace yields the equivalent air volume of a 1/4" headspace on a regular mouth jar. I'll keep poking around to find that or do the math before I try making some other sauce.

I did the prep for the third batch while the others were cooking down. I'd always known it would have to wait, given the amount of time it takes ketchup to cook down. So I whirled the tomatoes and onions in the food processor and stuck them in the fridge.

Know what I'm going to make with them instead of the third ketchup recipe?

Chutney.

Related reading and recipes

• Green Tomato Chutney Not-a-Ketchup Sauce
• When Life Hands You a Defrosted Freezer, Make Jam
• My Circular Economy of Apples
• Making Taybarb: Tayberry Rhubarb Jam Recipe
• Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024
• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade
• All my posts on food, gardening, and the environment

Canstravaganza! Food Preservation 2024

Shelves full of small jars in various colors attest to the bounty of 2024 and my many weekends of chopping, stirring, and canning. I still have jars left from 2023—salsa verde, piccalilli, chow chow—so I didn't make things I still have on the shelf. Make that shelves: Pantry shelves in the laundry room, more stored inside a laundry room cupboard, and a lot stored on shelving in the garage. We can only eat so much salsa verde and the tomatillos were so, so prolific in 2023 I still have some in the freezer.

On a wintery day in early February 2025 I woke to snow on the ground and we had periods of snow falling throughout the day. I decided it was the perfect day to make the kitchen smell like summer. The first canning of 2025 really represents some of the final canning of the 2024 harvest. Not the final final, mind you. I still have blueberries, elderberries, green cherry and grape tomatoes in the freezer. From 2023 I still have big bags of tomatillos and some chopped leeks I've been thinking I might make into soup, or leek jam/marmalade of some kind (maybe this recipe for Leek and Roasted Garlic Jam). And oh my gosh, just realized I have another two full gallon bags of blackberries still in the freezer after that canning session.

Those snowy Sunday recipes:

• Tayberry Jam Recipe by Chef Heidi Fink. 11 quarter-pints, 6 half-pints
• Classic Raspberry Jam Recipe by Creative Canning. 7 quarter-pints, 7 half-pints
• Blackberry Roasted Plum Preserves by Southern Fatty. 8 quarter-pints, 8 half-pints
• Blackberry Plum Fruit Leather: No recipe needed. Pureed blackberries and plums in the food processor, dropped in dollops about the size of a Nilla wafer on the dehydrator trays, and dried overnight to produce little fruity coins by the next morning. Those went into the freezer.

Somewhat belatedly in summer 2024 I started a tally of what I'd made. I reconstructed it by going back through my journal, where I'd usually noted what I made and the yield, and by reviewing what I'd lined up on the shelves. I hadn't always made a note so it's an imperfect record but still gives an idea of volume and variety.

Tally from 2024 canning that doesn't include a fair amount of jerky (mushrooms, jackfruit, cauliflower) that I also made along the way using that old food dehydrator:

June

• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries, 10 half-pints, 3 pints
• Quick Pickled (Refrigerator) Red Onions, 6 quarts

July

• Strawberry Rhubarb Jam, 2 quarter-pints, 12 half-pints
• Sweet & Salty Pickled Cherries, 4 half-pints (these are definitely on regular repeat every cherry season in the future!)

August

• Rhubarb Orange Chutney, 9 quarter-pints, 3 half-pints
• Hot Sweet Zucchini Chutney, 9 quarter pints, 8 halfpints
• Blackberry Apple Chutney, 8 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 1 pint, 3 quarts, 1 1-1/2-pint container
• Blackberry Vinegar, 7 four-ounce bottles
• Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam, 6 quarter-pints, 1 half-pint, 1 pint
• Citrus Ginger Marmalade, 6 quarter pints, 6 half-pints
• Caramelized Onion Jam, 5 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 7 pints

September

• Salted Caramel Pear Butter, 5 half-pints
• Cinnamon Cardamom Pear Jam, 5 half-pints
• Orange Tomato Jam with Smoked Paprika, 6 half-pints
• Maple Applesauce with Cinnamon and Cloves, 7 pints
• Pickled Pears, 3 pints
• Basic Canned Tomatoes, 1 pint, 2 quarters
• Dried Tiny Tomatoes, maybe 2 pints? (didn't measure; did this any time I fell behind the tomato onslaught)
• Slow Oven-Roasted Roma Tomatoes, maybe 2 pints?
• Raspberry Vinegar, 6 four-ounce bottles (no real recipe; did the same thing I did to make the blackberry vinegar)
• Marinated Dehydrated Tomatoes , ~4 quarts
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa, 10 pints
• Apple Mint Jelly, 4 quarter-pints (made without the pectin the recipe calls for)
• Gingered Pear Preserves, 6 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Tomato Citrus Marmalade, 7 quarter-pints, 4 half-pints
• Spicy Tomato Jam #2, 6 quarter-pints, 2 half-pints
• Indian Apple Chutney, 13 half-pints
• Plain Applesauce, 4 pints
• Chunky Caramel Apple Jam, 7 quarterpints, 5 half-pints
• Apple Ginger Jelly, 7 quarter-pints, 5 half-pints
•  Easy Addictive Tomato Chutney, 3 quarter pints, 8 half-pints
• Chai-Ginger Apple Butter, 4 quarter-pints, 1 half-pint
• Tomato Jam, 1 quarter-pint, 6 half-pints
• Canned Apples, 6 pints

October

• Canned Crushed Tomatoes, 4 pints
• Smoky, Spicy, Skillet Tomato Jam, 6 quarter-pints
• Scarborough Fair Vinegar (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme), 10 4-ounce bottles
• Pickled Hottish Peppers, 3 half-pints (I can't swear that this is the recipe I followed but Chili Pepper Madness is a great site)
• Green Tomato Chutney, 14 quarter-pints, 16 half-pints
• Lacto-Fermented Green Cherry and Grape Tomatoes, 3 pints
• Dehydrated Seasoned Green Tomatoes: Not going to link to because they weren't good enough to repeat. I'm hiding them in batches of soup until they're gone.

Thoughts on the season:

1. I'd make almost every one of these recipes again. (The Chunky Caramel Apple Jam was a bit disappointing; I might grate the apples and amp up the caramel if I repeated it.)
2. I don't need to repeat all these next season, though, because those shelves are packed full!
3. I give some of this bounty away every so often, apparently not often enough.
4. No wonder September 2024 is sort of a blur in my memory.

I blogged along the way to capture recipes I found and those I created. I'm glad I did; it will make it easier when I do buckle up for another ride on the canstravaganza train.

• Blackberry Apple Chutney Recipe
• Green Tomatoes. So Many Green Tomatoes.
• Apples, Apples, Apples!
• Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)
• Tomatoes, Tomatoes, Tomatoes!
• Pears, Pears, Pears!
• Future Marmalade

Edited to add that I came back to this post to help with the calculation of how many nice one-piece lids I need to order from Fillmore for the next season. Good to have a full tally right here. I get some wide-mouthed, some regular, and this year I plan to make a few sauces so I need some bottles with smaller lids. In 2024 I used 312 jar lids, some regular, some wide-mouth. I'm having an aha moment right now in the realization that giving canning jars with nice lids makes it less likely that the jars will be returned, but I can live with that. I have dozens of rings for the two-piece approach so I'll restock lids for those plus the nice ones.