- It's harvest season, and it feels like everything is coming on at once.

It can feel a little overwhelming, but you don't want all that hard work you've put into growing your garden all season to go to waste.

So a sure way to get the most out of your harvest is by canning.

We're here with Cindy Jenkins, and she's a bit of a canning expert.

She's going to walk us through the process of canning tomatoes.

And if you find this video helpful, please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel.

Cindy, thank you so much for being a part of Modern Gardner.

- Thank you for having me here.

I'm excited.

- I want to start by going over what you're going to need to can tomatoes.

You'll need a canner with a rack and lid.

In our demo, we're going to be using an electric water bath canner.

You'll need your common canning tools, a funnel, jar lifter, headspace measuring tool which you can also use to remove air pockets, magnetic lid lifter.

And you can find all these common tools in a canning set as shown here.

Absorbing acid or lemon juice, and jars, lids and bands.

And then, of course, our tomatoes.

- Well, I can't forget about those, right?

- Let's go score some tomatoes.

- Great.

Okay.

- Let's talk about what you're looking for.

What type of tomato is best?

Let's talk tomatoes.

- I love tomatoes.

So we're going to go over a few different varieties here.

These are Abruzzeses, these ones are Salvaterras, and then we also have some Celebrity tomatoes here.

So these are all paste tomatoes.

- Right.

- The best ones to can are paste tomatoes because they're a little bit meatier.

And they don't have quite as much liquid in them, so you get more bang for your buck that way.

Also you want really healthy-looking tomatoes.

These are all beautiful.

And then we have an example here of what not to can.

so you can kind of see how there's a bad spot here.

Doesn't look so good.

It's splitting a little bit on the top.

- You couldn't just cut it out?

- So tempting, right?

To just cut it out.

However, because the mold may not be isolated to the one spot, we recommend that you just don't use them.

- We've washed all our tomatoes, just under cold running water.

And now we're going to remove the skins.

- Yeah, so what you want to do is we'll just do two cuts.

And make a little X right there, okay?

- Okay, cool.

- There you go.

- Do you have to score them?

- Okay, you don't have to, but that is what will guarantee that the skin will come off.

So it's a good, best practice issue.

(upbeat music) - Okay.

- And then we'll put them in the boiling water for about 60 seconds.

- Now I'm going to take them out.

Okay.

Oh, wow, look at that.

- Ooh, they're already splitting, right?

- Yeah, the skin just wrinkled right up, that's cool.

- All right.

So these ones are ready.

Let's take them out and pull the skins off.

Look at how easily this comes off here, right?

That just comes right off.

Fingers get a little messy, that's okay.

We've got our bowl ready.

Now we've taken all the skins off.

We've taken the cores out, and you can do whole or half tomatoes.

For these other ones that are really, really big tomatoes, I'm just going to them one more cut, so they're all about the same size in there.

And then that's it.

- Yeah, those wouldn't even fit through the lid, right?

- I know, right?

I don't think they would either.

- All right, there's all our beautiful tomatoes, - Yeah, that's beautiful.

And now we can put them in the jars so that way we can take our next step and actually can the tomatoes.

- Okay.

Awesome.

All right.

- Ooh, that was a good five.

- We've washed the jars in hot, soapy water to make sure they're ready to go.

And then it is also a good idea to sanitize your jars by keeping them in the boiling water for 10 minutes, that will sanitize them.

- Do you need to put the lids in there as well?

- Oh, you don't need to put the lids and the rings in there just because these ones you don't want to hurt the seals.

- Okay.

- So these ones you just wash off with hot soapy water.

All we're using today is powdered up vitamin C tablets.

- Okay.

- You might see in the books as well as ascorbic acid or citric acid, you can also use lemon juice.

And for lemon juice, you'll do two tablespoons per quart.

And for the citric acid, we're just using half a teaspoon per quart.

So that's all you have to put in there.

And you can use either wide-mouth jars or these normal jars, just the little funnels for canning fit in there so perfectly, I think most people tend to use these kinds of jars - The regular mouth?

- Yeah, the regular mouth jars.

- Okay.

- All right.

So we're gonna fill up our jars now with all of our tomatoes.

These we're going to do just in their own juice.

- Cool.

- As they cook more juice will come in.

- Okay.

Do I kind of squish them down a little bit?

Is that okay?

- Yeah, 'cause the juice will come out of the tomatoes and then they'll look really good.

Make sure we do that 'cause there will likely be some air bubbles.

- So you kind of just slide it down the side?

- Oh my gosh.

Yeah, look how much that squished down when we did that.

- Okay.

- And it's just on the sides, but look at how much space we made.

- You can really pack these jars.

- I know, right?

We need a half inch of headspace.

One of the reasons why you want appropriate headspace, not too little, not too much.

'Cause you want to make sure to get all of that oxygen out.

So that way those little botulism spores don't have any way to grow, so that's a big thing.

- Now we're ready to- - Keep the rims clean.

- Yeah, keep the rims nice and clean.

You really want this seal to be nice and tight on there.

So you don't want anything that might interfere with it.

- Gotcha.

- Okay.

So you put it on there, make sure it's on right in the right spot.

We're going to twist these on.

You might be tempted to think, oh, I have to make sure that these jars, that these lids stay on the jars.

So I'm going to do it super tight.

However, you just want it to be finger tight.

If it's too tight, it can cause buckling where your lids kind of warp a little bit.

It can interfere with the natural sealing process.

- Okay.

- So that's where you want it to be, just finger tight.

They're heavy, water's hot, we're gonna use our jar lifter here to stick that in nicely.

Okay.

Next one.

So we're going to put this lid on and let them go.

All right.

- So it comes to a boil and that's when- - That's when we'll put the timer on.

- So we're gonna process these for like 90 minutes in the water bath?

- Yeah, 95 minutes.

Because for our altitude, you usually add on 10 minutes for every recipe that you have 'cause they're all done to sea level.

So since we're higher than that you add 10 minutes for pretty much all of your water bath canning recipes.

- Okay, so just check your recipe and then you'll know how long to process it for.

- Exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

- Once your timer goes off carefully pull your jars straight out of the counter and place them on a flat surface.

Leave any excess water on top of the lids, and resist the urge to tip the jar.

Just allow your jar to sit and cool undisturbed.

You may hear the lids pop as the jar cools creating a vacuum seal, but if you don't hear a pop, don't worry.

It doesn't necessarily mean your jar didn't seal.

- So you can kind of see that the lid, it bows down just a little bit.

And they can seal over the next 12 hours or so, but usually it happens just a few minutes after you take the jars out of the water.

And then another thing that you can do to check and make sure that your lid is sealed, is you take the ring off and you should be able to even pick up the jar from the lid itself.

No ring, right.

- That makes me nervous.

- I've done it lots of times and it totally works.

That's how tight the seal is.

Crazy, right?

And then too, it's kinda nice for your storage purposes to just leave those rings off because when they're off, you couldn't really tell better that your jars are sealed.

- How do you label your jars?

- I love to can salsa and things like that.

And so I'll kind of give myself some details about what I put in the jars.

That way I make sure I remember.

And then I'd give myself an expiration date.

- Okay.

Cool.

How long will they keep for?

- Okay, so they're good to keep for one to two years.

For quality purposes, after two years, you definitely don't want to eat that anymore.

Best time it was within one year.

For storage purposes, there are a few best practices.

Your jars need to be in an environment that is about a 70 degree temperature.

You don't want it to be in the sunlight.

And then that will also help preserve the quality of your food.

- Okay.

- So if you've got a pantry, or a basement, or a place where you can put them, even under a bed.

And then one last thing that I want to plug is that for the recipes you use, you always want to use a research-based recipe just because.

I know it's so tempting to use one that your grandma made or that your neighbor said was the best ever.

However, just because they're not research-based, they're not guaranteed to be safe, especially for the long term.

- Cindy, thank you so much for all of your knowledge and walking us through this process.

- Oh, you're so welcome.

Yeah.

And thank you for helping.

- We hope this video has inspired you to can your first batch of tomatoes.

Let us know how the process went for you in the comments below.

Thanks everyone.

- Thanks.

- Bye.