- 2 days ago
🍅 **Want to preserve your tomato harvest for the winter without taking up precious fridge space?** In this video, we'll explore a traditional jar-preservation method for storing tomatoes and making the most of a big summer harvest.
Whether your garden produced more tomatoes than you can eat or you simply want to prepare food for the colder months, knowing proper preservation techniques can help reduce waste and keep your pantry stocked.
In this video, you'll discover:
🍅 How tomatoes can be prepared for preservation
How to properly prepare your jars
🌱 A simple approach using basic ingredients
❄️ Ways to preserve your harvest without relying on refrigerator storage
🏡 Traditional food-storage ideas for a well-stocked pantry
⚠️ Important food-safety considerations when preserving tomatoes
**Important:** Tomatoes must be preserved using a tested, food-safe canning method for room-temperature storage. Simply sealing fresh tomatoes in a jar can allow dangerous microorganisms to grow. Follow current guidance from a trusted food-preservation authority for the exact processing and acidification requirements.
If you grow your own tomatoes or love traditional food-preservation meth
Whether your garden produced more tomatoes than you can eat or you simply want to prepare food for the colder months, knowing proper preservation techniques can help reduce waste and keep your pantry stocked.
In this video, you'll discover:
🍅 How tomatoes can be prepared for preservation
How to properly prepare your jars
🌱 A simple approach using basic ingredients
❄️ Ways to preserve your harvest without relying on refrigerator storage
🏡 Traditional food-storage ideas for a well-stocked pantry
⚠️ Important food-safety considerations when preserving tomatoes
**Important:** Tomatoes must be preserved using a tested, food-safe canning method for room-temperature storage. Simply sealing fresh tomatoes in a jar can allow dangerous microorganisms to grow. Follow current guidance from a trusted food-preservation authority for the exact processing and acidification requirements.
If you grow your own tomatoes or love traditional food-preservation meth
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00There is nothing so sad in the kitchen as a summer's worth of ripe tomatoes gone soft
00:05and spoiled on the counter because there were more than a family could eat before they turned.
00:10And there is nothing so fine as opening a jar of your own tomatoes in the deep of winter
00:15or pulling a string of dried ones from the pantry and tasting summer again when the ground
00:21outside is frozen hard.
00:23So today I am going to show you the good old ways to put your tomatoes by for the winter
00:28without a fridge and without any strange chemistry, just the plain, honest methods our people
00:34used so that not one of your tomatoes goes to waste and you eat your own garden clear
00:39through till spring.
00:41Let me show you.
00:43Here is the thing to understand first before we go a step further, for it is the most important
00:48thing I will say, and it keeps you and your family safe.
00:52When you seal up a food in a jar and keep it on the shelf at room warmth for months,
00:57you
00:57must do it right, exactly right.
01:00For the tomato is what is called a low acid food, or near to it.
01:04And the low acid food, sealed up and stored warm, can grow a poison you cannot see nor
01:10smell nor taste.
01:12And it is a deadly one.
01:14This is nothing to frighten you off, for our grandmothers put food by safely all their lives.
01:19But it is a thing to respect.
01:22And it means two rules must never be broken with jarred tomatoes.
01:25You keep them good and sour with enough acid, and you process them right.
01:31Get those two right, and it is safe as bread.
01:34Guess at them, and it is not.
01:36So I will give you the safe way carefully.
01:38And I will also give you three other ways of keeping tomatoes that carry no such risk
01:43at all, so you may choose what suits you.
01:45Now let me take you through them.
01:47Quick word before we go further.
01:49My name is Esther Yoder, and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing
01:55today, and a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video.
02:01I have gathered the whole of them into a book, and you will find it at EliasYoder.com.
02:06If today's tips serve you, that is where the rest of what my mother and grandmother taught
02:11me lives, all in the one place.
02:13Now, to the tomatoes.
02:15My grandmother put up tomatoes every summer of her life, jars and jars of them lining the
02:21cellar shelves.
02:22And she used to say that a full cellar was a summer saved, that every jar she sealed in
02:27August was a taste of sunshine for a cold January night.
02:31But she was careful about it, particular in a way she was about few other things, for
02:36she knew, as the old canning women all knew, that putting food by is a craft with rules,
02:42and that the rules are not fussiness, but safety.
02:45And she followed them exactly every time.
02:48So here is her way, careful as she was, and then the easier ways besides.
02:53The first way is the canning, the putting up in jars for the shelf, and I will give it
02:58to you with all its care.
02:59For done right, it is a wonderful thing that keeps tomatoes a year and more, with no cold
03:04at all.
03:05The heart of doing it safe is the two rules I named.
03:09The first is acid.
03:11Tomatoes must be made properly sour to be safe on the shelf, so you add acid to every
03:15jar, and the surest is lemon juice, about two tablespoons to a quart jar, or bottled lemon
03:21for a sure known strength, or a good measured amount of vinegar.
03:25And here is a thing to know, do not load your tomato jars up with a lot of onion and
03:30garlic
03:30and other low acid things, for they lower the acid and spoil the safety.
03:35Keep the jar mostly tomato, properly acidified, and add your onions and garlic and herbs fresh
03:41when you cook with it later, not packed raw into the storage jar.
03:46Keep it sour, and keep it mostly tomato.
03:48And the second rule is the processing, the heating of the sealed jars that drives out
03:53the air and makes them keep and kills what must be killed.
03:57And here I must be plain and honest with you, the way I always am.
04:02For tomatoes, the safe way is a full, rolling, boiling water bath, the jars covered with water
04:09boiling hard, a true hard boil, for the proper length of time.
04:14Not a gentle, warm pasteurizing, but a real boil.
04:19Now the exact time depends on the size of your jars, and your altitude, and just how you have prepared
04:26them.
04:26And here is where I do for you what I always do when a thing wants more precision than a
04:32video can safely give.
04:33I send you to a good, trusted canning guide, the kind your county extension office gives out free,
04:40or a well-known tested canning book for the exact tested times and amounts.
04:46I do this not to send you away, but because your family's safety rides on those exact numbers,
04:53and I would rather point you to the tested truth than have you trust a number I said in passing.
05:00That is the honest way, and the safe one.
05:03Get your acid right, boil it right for the tested time, wipe your rims, seal your lids,
05:10and check that each lid has sucked down tight and sealed as it cools.
05:15Any that did not seal, you keep in the cold and eat soon rather than store.
05:21Done so, by the book, your canned tomatoes are safe and keep beautifully.
05:26And it is a genuinely fine old craft worth learning properly.
05:31Now, because canning wants that care and that precision, let me give you three other ways to keep tomatoes
05:38that are simpler and carry no such risk at all.
05:42For these, you can do freely with an easy mind, and they are every bit as much without a fridge
05:48and without chemistry.
05:49The second way, and one of the oldest and safest there is, is drying.
05:54A dried tomato keeps for many months, takes up almost no room, and holds a wonderfully deep sweet tart flavor,
06:03richer than the fresh, for the drying concentrates it.
06:06You take good ripe tomatoes, the smaller plum kind are best for it being less watery,
06:12and you cut them in halves or thick slices, and you lay them out in a single layer, not touching,
06:18and dry them until they are leathery and dry clear through with no soft wet left in them.
06:25In a hot, dry, sunny climate, you can dry them in the sun, covered with a netting from the flies,
06:31brought in at night from the damp.
06:33In a wetter place, you dry them in a very low oven, for those who have one, or over the
06:39wood stove,
06:40or in a drying rack in a warm, airy spot, slow and low until they are done.
06:46Dried thoroughly, with no moisture left to spoil, and kept in a jar in the cool dark, they keep for
06:53months,
06:53and you eat them as they are, or soak them soft again, or drop them straight into a winter soup
07:00or stew,
07:00where they swell and flavor the whole pot. Drying is safe, simple, and it stores small. It is one of
07:08my favorites.
07:09The third way is freezing, for those of you with a freezer, and it is the very easiest of all,
07:15and needs no skill whatsoever.
07:17Tomatoes freeze beautifully for cooking, and here is the wonder of it. You need not even cut them up.
07:23You can take whole, ripe tomatoes, wash them, dry them, and put them straight into the freezer, whole in a
07:31bag, and they keep for many months.
07:33And a fine thing happens. When you thaw a frozen tomato, the skin slips right off in your hand with
07:40no blanching needed,
07:41and you have a peeled tomato ready for your sauce or soup. Or you may cook your tomatoes down into
07:47a sauce or a puree first,
07:49and freeze that in portions, ready to use. Frozen tomatoes go soft when thawed, so they are for cooking, not
07:57for slicing fresh.
07:58But for all your winter soups and stews and sauces, they are perfect. And there is no method safer or
08:05simpler.
08:06If you have the freezer, this is the easy path. And the fourth way is pickling, the making of a
08:13proper sour tomato pickle.
08:15And this one is both delicious and safe, for its safety comes from being truly sour with vinegar, which is
08:22the honest old way acid keeps food.
08:25Green tomatoes especially, the ones caught at the end of the season that will never ripen, make a wonderful pickle,
08:33sliced and packed into jars with a good strong vinegar brine, spiced as you like with your peppercorns and bay,
08:40and a bit of onion and garlic.
08:42For in a proper vinegar pickle, the acid is high and known and safe, unlike the low acid storage jar.
08:50A good vinegar pickle of green tomatoes is a fine, sharp thing on the winter table, and it uses up
08:57all those green ones the frost would otherwise take.
09:00And here is a bonus for the green tomatoes besides. Many an end of season green tomato will ripen slowly
09:08indoors if you bring it in before the frost,
09:11and set it in a single layer in a cool, dark, airy place, a cellar or a pantry shelf, and
09:18check it over regular.
09:20And they will redden one by one over the coming weeks, giving you fresh, ripe tomatoes long after the garden
09:27is done.
09:29Wrap each in a bit of paper to slow it, or leave them out to come faster.
09:34Either way, you stretch your fresh tomatoes well into the cold.
09:38So there are your four good ways, each with its place.
09:42The canning, done carefully by the book, for jars of tomatoes on the shelf.
09:47The drying, safe and small and simple.
09:51The freezing, easiest of all for those with a freezer.
09:55And the pickling, and the slow ripening for the green ones and the sharp winter relish.
10:00Between them, not one tomato of your summer's crop need ever go to waste.
10:06And you eat your own garden clear through the winter, without a store and without a worry.
10:11Now think a moment about why we came to buy pale, mealy, tasteless tomatoes from the store all winter,
10:19trucked from far away and picked green, when a summer's own crop, rightly put by, would give us better ones
10:26for nothing clear till spring.
10:27It is worse than a plot, for no one had to arrange it.
10:31There is a great fortune in selling folk fresh tomatoes the year round, and in the cans off the shelf.
10:38And none at all in teaching a family to dry and freeze and can and pickle its own summer glut
10:45for the winter, as every household once did.
10:48So the old knowing of putting food by, that whole great art of saving the summer for the winter,
10:54just stopped being handed down, because no one profits by your keeping your own.
11:00My grandmother's cellar was full of her own tomatoes every winter, and somewhere between her day and ours,
11:06we were taught to throw the summer's extra away and buy pale ones in January.
11:12The mending of it is a summer afternoon and a few plain ways.
11:16You dry a batch of your ripe ones for the deep flavor and the small keeping.
11:21You freeze whole tomatoes for your winter soups if you have the freezer, easiest of all.
11:27You pickle your green ones sharp in vinegar and ripen the rest slow in the cellar.
11:32And if you would can them on the shelf, you do it carefully and by the book, sour enough and
11:38boiled right and sealed sure.
11:40Or you point yourself to a good canning guide and learn it proper.
11:44And not one tomato is wasted.
11:46And you eat summer all winter long, from your own garden, safe and sweet.
11:52That is how it comes home.
11:54One dried tray, one frozen bag, one careful jar at a time.
11:58The keeping of your own harvest back in your own hands.
12:02So here is what I would ask of you.
12:04This season, when your tomatoes come on faster than you can eat them, do not let a one of them
12:10spoil.
12:11Try just one of these ways.
12:13Dry a tray or freeze a bag or pickle your green ones.
12:16And then come back and tell me in the comments which you tried and how it kept.
12:20For I do love to hear of a summer's harvest saved rather than wasted.
12:25And tell me too, while you are there, your county and the age of your house.
12:30For the old houses so often have the real cellars and cool pantries built for just this keeping.
12:36And the drying goes so much easier in a hot, dry climate than a damp one.
12:40And I learn from every one of you how the keeping goes where you live.
12:44And if your own mother or grandmother had a way of putting tomatoes by that I have not named here,
12:51tell me that most of all, for that is how this goes, we share what we were given.
12:56I read every comment and I learn from you the way the old women learned from one another across the
13:04fence line.
13:05One pantry and one season at a time.
13:08Next time I will show you the whole careful craft of canning.
13:13Done safe and right, step by step.
13:16The acid and the boiling bath and the sealing and the testing.
13:20So that those of you who want your shelves full of your own jars can learn it proper and do
13:27it with confidence and an easy mind.
13:29There is a right and an old way to put up near everything a garden gives.
13:34And done by the book, it is safe and sure and one of the most satisfying things there is.
13:40But this season, you start with saving your tomatoes however suits you best.
13:46You dry them or freeze them or pickle them or, carefully and by the book, you can them.
13:53And you ripen your green ones slow in the cellar and you let not one go to waste.
13:59And you will understand, as my grandmother did at her own full cellar shelves, that a summer rightly saved is
14:08a winter of your own good food.
14:10That the tomato is a low acid thing that wants respect and care in the jar, but keeps freely and
14:17safely by drying and freezing and pickling.
14:20And that with a few plain old ways, you eat your own summer garden clear through the frozen months, without
14:28a store and without a worry.
14:31The pantry kept the plain old way is the one that remembers how the old women saved a whole summer
14:38of tomatoes for the winter with the sun, the cellar, a crock of vinegar and a careful hand at the
14:45canning.
14:46And that is a thing we are only just starting to remember.
14:50DEPUTY NOT FORD
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