Canning Tomato Sauce - super easy with pictures!

Here on our little homestead the tomatoes are starting to take off! The first week or so it was really hard to get any of them into the house because we would all eat them out in the garden...especially Henry and Addie, they would sit giggling in the corner eating all the red cherry tomatoes. I was making alot of sauces and pizzas but the tomato harvests have got to the point we are having more than we can eat in one day...so the canning begins!! I have really been looking forward to this so it was an exciting day for me :)

Canning USA had a great recipe for canning tomato sauce with herbs...I also think one part that really caught my eye in this recipe was the addition of red wine...which I used our pinot noir we just bottle last month :) Another part of this recipe that I was particularly interested in is that they do not say it is necessary to blanch, peel, core and seed the tomatoes. Alot of the recipes I found said that I would need to take all that out which I felt like was a waste of a lot of tomato!!

I had 10 lbs of tomatoes to work with so I modified the recipe to be for 10 lbs and not 15...but its the basic idea

Ingredients:

Tomatoes, Onions, Basil and Garlic from the Garden!

• 10 lbs Tomatoes
• 1 1/3 lb Onions
• 1/3 cup Olive Oil
• 2 tbl Salt
• 2/3 tbl Pepper
• 2/3 bottle Wine
• 1 1/3 cup Herbs (I used basil)
• 4 cloves Garlic (I used more but we like alot of garlic)
• Lemon Juice (I used Citric Acid instead, 1/4 tsp per pint jar)

Canning Steps: (from CanningUSA.com)

1. If desired, blanch and peel tomatoes (I did not desire to do this)
2. Coarsely chop tomatoes and put them into a bowl. (I used my food processor and just pulsed each batch a few times)

3. Chop onions and then sauté onions with optional garlic in olive oil until translucent. (I chopped the onions pretty small in the food processor) 
4. For large canning batch this will take about 15 minutes
5. When onions are done, add chopped tomatoes.

6. Add optional wine and herbs
7. Stir well and bring the entire pot to an even slow simmer.

8. Simmer until reduced by one third (approx. 2 hours)... and it did take a little over 2 hours
9. For canning, mix in lemon juice and simmer for 5 minutes. (I did not use lemon juice but added my 1/4 tsp citric acid to the top of each pint jar)
10. Can immediately using hot pack method with 1/2” of head space.

11. Processing with a Water Bath; 30 minutes for pints or 35 minutes for quarts at 212 degrees. For elevations above 1,000 foot level see Altitude Time Adjustments.

12. After processing, remove from boiling water and place the jars on a towel, separated by 1” to cool naturally as quickly as possible.
13. Labeling and Storing

This recipe made 9 full pints and 1 half pint. All of the jars sealed beautifully and they sure look delicious! I did save a little at the end of the pan that we all tried and it was SO good, I wanted to open a jar right then, but then I realized I did all that work and wanted to save it for winter when I don't have fresh tomatoes and basil :)