Totally Tomatoes

It has been a busy canning weekend at our little house in the woods! Between the two of us, this weekend Nick and I put up eight pints of pickles, a pint of tomato jam, nine pints of salsa, and a pint of homemade ketchup. That plus decorating the new office (to be addressed in an upcoming post)

Salsa and ketchup? Yes indeed! Yesterday Nick used his home brewing grain grinder to grind up a few pounds of tomatoes, plus onions, bell peppers and garlic. To this he added chopped jalapeno peppers and cilantro to make salsa fresca. We used our old (new) pressure canner for the first time as well. Nick made two batches; a larger mild one and a smaller batch that was heavy on the jalapenos. How were they? We've only tried the mild so far, and it's...ok. Lovely fresh tomato flavor but the all of the bite of  the onion, garlic and jalapeno cooked out. Needed acid, too, though it tasted better with some lime juice added. So not amazing, but a good starting point.

That was yesterday. Today, after picking a few more pounds of tomatoes from the garden, we decided to try ketchup. I used five pounds of tomatoes, mostly garden tomatoes and a few from the CSA. We found a good-looking recipe online at the Journal Sentinel to work with. Onions, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, mustard seed and dry mustard powder, peppercorns, cumin seed, salt, cider vinegar, sugar and a smidgen of cayenne pepper. Doesn't it sound good? Pureed the veggies and tomatoes, drained them in a fine sieve, and cooked the liquid low and slow, adding the spices and vinegar halfway through.

We made 1 1/2 recipes' worth, except I did not increase the sugar and I cut the cayenne pepper in half. Altogether 5 lbs of tomatoes cooked down to one pint of ketchup, but it was well worth it. It was fantastic. I think it was perfect; Nick wants to add a little Worcestershire sauce next time. When our CSA sells bulk tomatoes later this month, I will definitely be making more of this!