pictures from sauce making round one, round two, and round three

back on sept 2nd i made the third and final round of sauce. august 29th was the second round. august 17th was the first round.



so many tomatoes. this bowl is gigantic. notice the tomatoes are stacked as tall as the can of no stick cooking spray.


plus some more


cooking down the sauce


onions and garlic from my garden


sweating the onions and garlic


more onions from my garden (i used one large sized and one small sized onion)


fire burn and cauldron bubble!


the aftermath


the sauce from round one all went in the freezer.


round two was when i ran all the tomatoes thru the strainer, but didnt cook them down, rather i just saved them in zip lock bags.

the strainer


close up


pouring liquid into a baggie is difficult. theres suddenly not enough hands. i cant hold the bag up and hold and tilt and pour the pan full of juice. so i improvised with a big bowl to contain spills, and a clip to hold the bag open and in place. worked pretty darn well.


baggies full of liquid tend to tip over and roll right off the counter top. they need help staying in place. (i'm still amazed the bag didnt burst and spray tomato juice/sauce all over my kitchen)


my least favorite part, clean up


4 gallons of juice/sauce



round three involved cooking down all those baggies from round two, and straining and cooking down another round of tomatoes, then using my new pressure cooker to can the sauce.

this tomato had a tail


soooooo many tomatoes


trying to get down level with the tomatoes to show how tall the pile was


let the mess making begin!


i was trying to cook down the sauce while still running tomatoes thru the strainer. turns out i dont divide my attention very well and managed to boil over the sauce.


sweating more onions and garlic (again from my garden)


one stockpot full of sauce filled 7 quart jars


pretty


my new pressure cooker


since it was my first time ever using a pressure cooker, i was paranoid about the pressure so i watched it like a hawk. turns out the pressure builds kinda slowly.


really slowly


omg would you just get there already!


as the pressure finally got close, i started turning down the heat, knowing that an electric stove top takes longer to cool down. at first i thought this would be the right temp to lower to.


but the pressure continued to rise, so i turned down the heat again


before finally settling between 3-4, which seemed to be the magic number to hold the pressure where i wanted it at 11 pounds.


my hard water left a film on all the jars (it wiped off easily tho)


left a film in the canner too


i ended up with 12 quart jars, and two zip lock baggies full of sauce.