The only tomatoes we can (as long as we have a choice) are San Marzanos. They are a roma tomato and are very meaty with less water than other varieties. They hold up well, are not very acidic, and taste great!
To can tomatoes whole, I do the following:
1. Wash the tomatoes in the sink. Cut off really bad spots (black spots) and smell the tomato to make sure it's OK. A lot of times if there's a big black spot in the tomato, the whole thing should be tossed out. Feed the scraps to the chickens or pig, or compost them.
2. Prepare 7 quart-sized jars for canning (wash) and fill each with 1/2 t. salt.
2. Drop 10 - 20 tomatoes into boiling water. As soon as you see the skin on one tomato crack, remove them all. I place them immediately into cold water.
3. Remove the skins. Put the whole tomato into the jar. It takes about 14 tomatoes to fill a jar.
4. Fill the jar until it's about 1/4" from the top. Take a knife and run it along the outer edge (down to the bottom) of the jar to release any trapped air in the jar.
5. Wipe the rim. Place a seal on and the ring.
6. When you have enough jars filled to fill your canner, place in either a hot water canner or a pressure cooker and process according to their instructions.
Important: Make sure you replace at least half of the water in the canner with cold water before you do a second batch or you might crack a jar. Also, do not open the lid on a pressure cooker until the pressure is down to 0 or do not open up the steam vent to let the pressure go down more quickly - the liquid in the jars will evacuate and you'll be left with a 1/2 full jar.
Remove the jars from the pot, let cool, rinse the next day and remove the rings (only after about 24 hours) and store in a dark, cool place. I store ours in a pantry and it's not super-cool or super-dark but it works.
Enjoy!
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