Although farm-fresh tomatoes are pretty scarce in the Northeast this summer, there are still some out there and they are as delicious as ever. While inexpensive, local, heirloom tomatoes are probably a pipe dream this year, now more than ever it is important to support your local farmers as they battle with the devastation of tomato, and possibly potato, crops ruined by late blight. With that in mind, I’ve bought a couple of 10-lb batches of tomatoes, in addition to what we are receiving in the CSA, and put them by for the winter.
Fire roasting is a lovely way to preserve tomatoes. The charring of the skins and the short roast of the flesh adds a subtle but delicious carmelized flavor to the tomatoes, enhancing their natural sweetness. The skins slip off easily and there is no fumbling with slippery tomatoes bouncing around in boiling water. Also I find this method to produce a much meatier, less watery/seedy canned tomato. Yield is lower than canning tomatoes whole, but the end product is that much more delicious. Once you have these put by you’ll find an endless variety of uses for them: soups & stews, a quick pasta sauce, pizza topping, bruschetta base or chicken cacciatore. Last year I thought I had put up enough to last me the year but I ended up running out in January! This year’s batch of canned roasted tomatoes will be all the more special because of their very scarcity; I shall have to come up with some fantastic recipes to do them justice.
Adapted from various tomato canning recipes in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving, J. Kingry & L. Devine, and from Leda Meredith’s Fire Roasted Tomatoes
Fire Roasted Tomatoes
INGREDIENTS
- 10 lbs tomatoes, any variety other than cherry
- lemon juice, vinegar, or citric acid
METHODS
- Prepare canner, jars and lids.
- Pre-heat the broiler of your oven. Alternatively, you could use a gas or charcoal grill. Core and halve tomatoes, trimming any bruised or cracked bits, and give each half a light squeeze to remove much of the liquid & seeds. Place the tomato pieces, skin side up, on a large rimmed sheet pan. Slide pan under the broiler and allow to roast until the skins are nicely blackened, about 15 – 20 minutes.
- Remove the pan from the oven (replacing with a fresh pan of cut tomatoes) and cover tomatoes with a clean kitchen towel. Allow tomatoes to cool, and steam slightly under the towel, until they are cool enough to handle, but still quite warm (the warmer they are, the easier it is to slip the skins off). Pluck off the skins and transfer the tomato meat to a clean, heat-safe bowl. Continue in batches until all the tomatoes are roasted and peeled.
- Drain excess juice from the tomatoes in the bowl. Roughly chop up larger pieces of tomato, in the bowl, using tongs or two forks, such that the final texture is chopped or crushed. Transfer chopped tomatoes to a colander, suspended over a bowl, to drain off most of the excess liquid. Strain liquid to remove seeds and reserve for another recipe.
- To each clean, hot pint jar, add 1/4 tsp of citric acid OR 1 tbsp of lemon juice. For quart jars, use 1/2 tsp citric acid or 2 tbsp lemon juice. Using a jar funnel and tongs, add tomatoes to the jar allowing a generous 1/2-inch of headspace. Push the tomatoes down with the handle of a wooden spoon, ensuring that juice covers all the fruit and that there are no air bubbles. Wipe rims, affix lids, and process pint jars in a boiling water bath for 40 minutes (quart jars for 45 minutes).
Ten lbs of tomatoes yields approximately 4 to 5 pints.
OPTIONS
- Cut and prepare tomatoes as quickly as you can, in batches, as once tomatoes are cut the exposure to air activates a natural enzyme that begins breaking down the pectin in the fruit and causes the liquids and solids in the tomatoes to separate. Heat inactivates this enzyme, so the sooner you get your cut tomatoes under the broiler, the better your end product will be (less separation of liquid & solid).
- Be diligent with the chopping step to ensure safety in water-bath canning: raw-packed whole or half tomatoes packed with no extra liquid require 85 minutes of processing time, vs. the 40 or 45 minutes required for chopped tomatoes above.
- Tomatoes can be safetly packed without added acid in a pressure canner. I don’t use a pressure canner but the National Center for Home Food Preservation has instructions.
STORE
Canned, in a cool, dark spot for up to 1 year.
SEASON
Summer.
localkitchenblog.com 
oh when I was at Jenkens I noticed they were selling homemade peanut butter sweetened with raw honey. Picked up a small container- it was v. tasty, but a tad sweet. Very suited to desserts though and ultimately snackable!! Try it next time you’re down there.
Thank you so much for sharing this! Just what I was looking for!!
Great recipe and looks fairly simple – I’ll give it a try and let you know how mine turns out. Glad we connected!
This looks great! I’m going to print it out and hope I can find it again in a few weeks when our tomatoes start getting ripe 🙂
Oh yes! I so want to try this. The tomatoes in the pacific NW are pretty slow in coming this year, thanks to our spring like weather (I’ve got over a dozen plants and have only had 2 ripe cherry tomatoes so far!)…but when I get my hands on some ripe tomatoes, I plan on trying this recipe.
Thanks!
This looks great! I’ve decided to try to avoid canned goods as best I can with all the talk of BPA these days. I saw another recipe where the author suggests freezing the tomatoes in an air tight freezer bag. Do you recommend this?
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Looks great! How many tomatoes did you roast at a time–all 10lb? I roasted a bunch and the steam set off the fire alarm so I’m trying to figure out the upper limit here…
Well, yesterday I got 9 pints so I’m guessing it was a half-bushel or close to 20 lbs. But I only do one tray at a time, and rotate them through: otherwise whatever tray is not directly beneath the broiler does not get blackened enough. The 20 lbs took me, I think, 6 trays in total? So, yes, it’s a somewhat lengthy process, but by the time I core & slice a new tray, pluck the skins from the old tray and chop the tomatoes, the one in the oven is close to done, so it all goes in a smooth process.
I’m curious why cherry tomatoes are not recommended for this method. I am just learning to can and I have tons of cherry tomatoes to deal with! Thanks!
Hi Betsie,
Mostly it’s because cherry tomatoes have very little actual “meat” – they are mostly skin & pulp. Since, in this method, you end up discarding most of the skin & pulp, the yield if using cherry tomatoes would be woefully small, especially considering the work you would have to put into peeling them all.
For an excess of cherry tomatoes, I usually make confit: https://localkitchenblog.com/2010/09/05/cherry-tomato-confit/ or use them in a salsa recipe that doesn’t call for peeling.
Thanks for the speedy reply! That makes sense and I thought that may be the case, but wondered if there was some mysterious reason not to can cherry tomatoes. Love the confit recipe – have done something similar but using a hotter oven. I bet the slow roast will improve the flavor.
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Winnie over at Healthy Green Kitchen recently put up a pickled cherry tomato recipe, fyi: http://www.healthygreenkitchen.com/pickled-cherry-tomatoes.html
Cherry tomatoes are excellent for dehydrating if you are a fan. I absolutely am and am going to try packing mine in olive oil to have on hand for my favorite pizza topping this winter!
Hi! I was hoping to make these this tonight but I’m a little confused by the processing time. Are these not considered raw packed because they’ve been roasted, even though the jars probably won’t be filled until the tomatoes have cooled? I always thought that the 85 minute processing time for tomatoes with no extra liquid was because it takes longer for heat to penetrate to the center of the jars (due to cold tomatoes), not because the tomatoes are big/not chopped. Just wanted to clarify! (Also, sorry if my wording is confusing, been staring at tomatoes for too long.)
Hi Taryn,
In the Ball book, the processing times for raw-pack & hot-pack tomatoes are the same: the differences come in with whole vs. crushed, or water vs. tomato juice (or no added liquid) packing. Therefore the difference in the processing time is to compensate for the higher density of tomatoes packed in either tomato juice or with no added liquid (their own tomato juices). Whole tomatoes in juice require more time (85 minutes) than crushed tomatoes (35 – 45 minutes) in order to ensure that heat penetrates to the center of each tomato.
Does that help?
Yes, that does help! I always assumed that crushed tomatoes process for less time because you boil them for 5 minutes, but your answer makes more sense. I canned these last night and really look forward to them in a batch of winter chili. Thank you for responding!
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How long does a jar last and what is the best way to store it?
I try to use the jars up within 2 years, but essentially, as long as the seal does not fail, storage time is indefinite. I store mine in a cool room-temperature, dark spot, with any bands off of the jars.
Can u add fore roasted garlic to this process?
Adding roasted garlic would change the acidity, and therefore the safety, of the recipe, therefore I would not recommend it. You could add a small amount, say 1 clove in a pint jar or 2 cloves in a quart jar; but I wouldn’t go beyond that.
Any ideas for the leftover tomato liquid?
Soup stock, braising liquid, make a tomato risotto…. or you can boil off most of the water and save the remaining tomato essence as a sort of bouillon cube.
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I don’t have a broiler, so can I put the tomatoes on gas burner of my stove? i don’t have a grill, either. Thanks!
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Reblogged this on Carolinasea's Blog and commented:
The Ball Blue Book is a better recipe, but this is close. I would definately add lots of garlic cloves and some fresh basil from the garden. Don’t even attempt this in a boiling water bath without the lemon or citric acid. I got three quarts last year and didn’t share one. We forgot about them and it was perfect, one cold, snowy January afternoon for my boyfriend and I to find the last jar and make the best pasta and sauce for dinner. Served with crusty french bread or bagette, this was perfect and the longer it sat, the better it was.
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I just canned tomatoes for the first time today using your recipe here! Tasty, and so much easier to take the skins off this way versus the “ole prick/boil/burn fingers while peeling” method. My 20lb box yielded 8 pints, after picking out a few bad ones. Thanks, Micaela!
I will try to roast tomatoes on barbeque grill for more flavor and easier for me to make vs the oven method.
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It looks great but I’m confused because it says core the tomatoes but I can see lots of seeds in your jars. Thanks
Hi Kathryn,
“Core” as in remove the tough, white core at the center, stem end: not removing all of the center juice & seeds.
Do you oil the roasting pans?