This is from my grandmother. She had 8 children so, as my Dad says, she was in the kitchen non-stop from August until October, canning. She got the recipe from Dorothy Volmer, Ohio.
When I can, I make a lot because it takes so much time to get set up and cleaned up. This is a good recipe for very ripe tomatoes that might include blemishes - they are sweet and don't generally hold up well for canning whole or salsa. So, I've included both my Grandma's recipe and what I did. You choose.
Grandma's recipe:
1 gallon tomatoes, cook with 1 diced onion and 1 T mixed pickling spice in a spice bag.
When well cooked, put in a bag, drain 1 hour and put through a sieve.
Add 1 c. vinegar, 1 c. sugar, 2 t. salt. Cook 10 minutes and can it up.
Here's what I did:
1 soup pot (18 Q) + more tomatoes (as the tomatoes cooked down, I kept adding more until my boxes were empty)
6 or 7 small onions, diced
2 c. brown sugar
1 big pour (1/4 cup?) honey
A small bag of pickling spice (in a spice bag)
1 c. or more white vinegar
6 - 10 t. sea salt
Cook the tomatoes, onions and pickling spice until it is well-cooked (maybe an hour). Then, place some cheese cloth in a large colander and pour the goop into the colander. It might take 2 colanders so be ready with more cheese cloth. Let it drain for 2 - 3 hours. Put it through a foley food mill - this will remove the skins and most of the seeds. Then return to a large cast iron skillet, add the remaining ingredients, to taste, and cook for about an hour, until the mixture coats a spoon. You don't want to cook it for too long because it will darken. If you don't cook it long enough, it will be runny. Use a wire whisk and stir it consistently. I jarred it in 1/2 pint jars - too small. I hot packed it (jarred it, flipped it upside down, and let it seal without further processing) but I know this isn't recommended.
Notes:
I use San Marzano paste tomatoes. They don't have as much liquid as the slicing tomatoes have and are very good in sauces.
Wash the tomatoes and cut out any brown spots. If there's a black spot in the tomato, cut it out and smell the tomato to make sure it's still OK. Feed all scraps to the chickens or throw them on the compost pile. Cut the tomato in half and throw in the pot.
Bring the tomatoes to a low boil. For this, I place the pot on a diffuser on the gas stove. I use a cast iron tortilla skillet as a diffuser - anything to spread out the heat so that it's not concentrated in one part of the pot. If I had a cast iron huge soup pot, I'd use that. Mine is aluminum.
As you're heating the tomatoes, stir them pretty constantly (every 30 seconds to minute). They will break down with time
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