Ok, I have 10 tomato plants and they are kicking out ripe tomatoes so fast now it’s overwhelming. I canned something like 5 gallons of them a couple of weeks ago, I’ve made lots of pasta sauce and some salsa, and I still have a large bowlful of them just sitting there, waiting for me to do something with them. Plus more on the way.
I need ideas, people! What are you doing with your end-of-season batches?
Oy. I just canned three pints (I only have 6 plants, and they’ve nearly wound down) last night. My wife loves tomato juice (I can’t stand it, personally), so I’ve also been crushing a lot of them and canning the juice.
What kind of tomatoes do you have? I’m afraid I don’t have much advice re: big tomatoes; I’m just canning them all, except for the odd one that goes into a salad/sandwich/stew. But for cherry tomatoes (or “grape” tomatoes, as everyone calls them now … WTF is up with that?) I have a great recipe for Sformata di Ricotta that I got from the NYTimes a while ago … here’s a copy of it that someone else put up:
It uses 10 ounces of tomatoes, which, sadly, may only be a drop in the bucket. But on the flip side, it’s so good (it’s a side dish … really excellent with steaks, which was its original pairing in the NYT) that you may end up making it every other day.
And my advice on that recipe:
Since my wife and I moved this summer I wasn’t able to grow my annual crop of ‘way too many tomatoes’.
So everyone that has too many, send them to me! I can’t stand supermarket tomatoes!!
One thing to do with excess tomatoes is to freeze them. They will no longer be useful for salads, but the frozen tomatoes can be used in cooking. When you want to cook with them, put them in boiling water a minute or too, so the skin will peel off very easily, then chop them up to use in your casserole or whatever.
I make extremely plain tomato sauce by coring and halving the tomatoes, and cooking them in a big pot until they soften. Then I pick out the skins with a tong. I leave the sauce to cook on a high heat until it’s considerably reduced and quite thick. Then I ladle it in servings of about 1.5 cups each into freezer ziploc bags and freeze them flat and stacked in the freezer. Because the sauce is reduced down quite a bit, it will take less freezer space.
I add to the sauce no salt, oil, or anything. This way, I can use the sauce in any kind of recipe I want, seasoning it as I cook.
Of course, I also use the fresh tomatoes in almost every meal from July through the end of September.
:: sigh :: I have a half-bushel waiting to be processed and another half-bushel to pick from my plants. Next year I swear I’m planting just one bush!
I send all my leftover tomatoes to my friend in Oakland. You should follow suit.
Wow, that Sformata di Ricotta looks pretty wonderful, toadspittle. Thanks for the recommendation.
teela brown, how much water do you use when you’re cooking the tomatoes to make sauce? I’d like to try that.
Last year I made tomatoe wine. Just like making any other wine. I added raisins (or grapes I suppose) and sugar to get the right balance. It ain’t bad. It isn’t my favorite wine but it is different.
Have you tried tomato jam? A friend made some this summer. It’s really good. We put cream cheese on a cracker and a dollop of the jam on top.
It’s sweet, with just a hint of tomato flavor.
I put in just a few tablespoons at the beginning, just to get things steaming and starting to cook. Cover the pot at first to accelerate the cooking and get the pulp softened. Then uncover the pot, pick out the skins, turn up the heat and reduce it, stirring now and then so it doesn’t scorch at the bottom.