How to Start Canning Tomatoes: Perfect Recipe and Guide
Canning tomatoes is easier than you think! Follow this step-by-step, beginner-friendly guide and recipe for a delicious garden-fresh flavor at home year-round.
Course Canning
Cuisine Italian
Keyword canning season, canning tomatoes
Prep Time 45 minutesminutes
Cook Time 15 minutesminutes
Total Time 1 hourhour
Servings 8-quart size jars
Author Valya's Taste of Home
Ingredients
Canned Tomatoes Recipe Ingredients
12 ¾cups– filtered water
6tbsp.- organic sugar
18tbsp.- Kosher salt
6tbsp.- distilled white vinegar
1medium - organic yellow onion
16small - garlic cloves(I used homegrown)
1large - organic carrot(I used homegrown)
160 -peppercorns(20 pieces per jar)
2tbsp.- crushed red pepper(¼ tsp. per jar)
16medium - bay leaves
16flowers - fresh dill
8lbs.- small tomatoes
Instructions
How to Prep Veggies for Canning Tomatoes
First things first, prepare the vegetables.
Peel, rinse, and then slice an onion into 8 rings. Then peel and rinse garlic cloves. And then peel, rinse and cut a carrot into one inch (2.5 cm) long sticks. Set aside until ready for use.
Next, wash tomatoes and set them aside.
How to Make Syrup for Canning Tomatoes
Time to prepare the syrup!
Add sugar, kosher salt, and vinegar to the water. Stir until sugar and salt granules dissolve. Set aside.
How to Prep Jars for Canning Tomatoes
Now let’s prep the jars for canning our tomatoes.
Rinse jars and lids with soapy warm water. With this method, you don’t need to sterilize your jars.
Place one ring of onion into a jar then 2 flower heads of fresh dill, 2 small garlic clove, and 6 carrot sticks.
Then add 2 bay leaves, 20 peppercorns, and ¼ tsp. of red crushed peppers.
Pack tomatoes into a jar as compactly as possible without squashing them. Fill jars with cold syrup. Pour or ladle the cold syrup over the tomatoes leaving a ½ inch headspace.
How to Can Tomatoes
Let’s can our tomatoes!
Place 4 jars into Stove Top Canner pot, and fill the pot with cold water until the jars are submerged ¾ in the water.
Bring the water in the canning pot to a boil.
When the water in the canning pot will start boiling you will also see the bubbles floating from the bottom to the top in the jars, this means that the water in the jars is boiling as well.
Let the water in the canning pot boil for about 3 minutes.
Place the lids and rims on the jars and tighten with your bare hands as tight as you can. This way you will feel if the lid is screwed properly not sideways but be careful not to burn your hands.
Put on canning gloves or use a canning utensil to remove the jar from the pot of hot water. Screw the lid pretty tight.
This 8 lbs. canner load of tomato mixture makes enough for 8-quart jars or 16-pint jars.