Canning Green Tomato Pickles

When we started growing our 19 tomato plants, it never occurred to me that we were going to have hundreds of green tomatoes that were never going to ripen.  I started looking in our canning and freezing book, Farm Journals Guide to Freezing and Canning.  Our edition has a red binding and green cover, but overall, this book has great recipes and tells you from step 1 how to can and freeze, the proper way to sterilize everything and how to use your pressure cooker.

As I mentioned, we had an abundance of green tomatoes on the Jasper Violet plants.  Two of the plants has started to die, so I decided to harvest all the fruit off the plant and compost the rest.  I was able to harvest four pounds of green tomatoes, which was perfect for a recipe from the Farm Journal's book to make green tomato pickles.  I harvest the tomatoes, sliced most of them in thirds, some in half, placed them in our trusty Dutch oven, and sprinkled three tablespoons of canning salt over the layers.

After letting the tomatoes sit in the salt for over 12 hours, I drained the water that was drawn out of the fruit, almost two cups.  I then mixed the spices (turmeric, celery seed, and mustard seed) and sugar together with the cider vinegar, and brought it all to a boil.  I added three cups of thinly sliced onions (thank you Mr. Mandolin!) and slowly cooked them down.

Then I added two chopped red bell pepper and the drained tomatoes.  I mixed together, as gently as possible as to not mush the tomatoes, brought to a boil, and then let simmer.

As the tomatoes simmered in the juice, I sterilized the canning jars and lids, and got everything ready for the hot water bath.  Due to tomatoes high acidity levels, there is no need to use a  pressure cooker, only put the filled jars into a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.

Taylor and I then filled the half pint jars, wiped the lids, and placed them in the boiling water.  All together, we got 11 half pint jars full of pickled green tomatoes.  Not a bad Sunday.



Taylor watching and listening to the seals making their signature 'pop'!