Plenty of Tomatoes? Make Tomato Juice

When your garden gives you tons of tomatoes, make some tomato sauce, or juice, or salsa. My garden has finally started cranking out some ripe tomatoes. The Romas are in overdrive, and they’re my favorite for canning and freezing. So I decided to make a little tomato juice the other night for soups this fall and winter.

I like to leave all the tomato pulp in my tomato juice for hearty chili and vegetable soups. You can also cook the juice down later to make pasta or pizza sauce. There are so many uses, I like to have several containers of tomato juice in the freezer by the end of the garden season.

It’s not difficult at all to make tomato juice. I start by dropping the whole tomatoes in boiling water for a couple minutes to loosen the skins. When the skins just start to peel back I pull them out and put them in a large bowl to cool a little before I try to peel them. It only takes about 2-3 minutes in boiling water.

As I peel the tomatoes I drop them in a large stock pot, then I simmer them on low for about 15 minutes and break up any large chunks of tomato pulp. You can also just freeze them or can them as whole tomatoes, and not make them into juice.

When the tomatoes are cooked I usually put the juice into quart size freezer containers to freeze, you can also put them into canning jars and give them a hot water bath to can them.

Pull the tomato juice out when you need it for soups, or sauces.

Tomato Images (c) L Gerlach