Over the years I have preserved tomatoes in many different ways. However, after seeing the way we eat and being most efficient with my time, I generally preserve tomatoes in two ways: tomato sauce and fermented salsa. Though, I will can juice sometimes too.

This year I decided to only grow two varieties: Roma and Cherokee Purple. I may regret this, but currently it is working ok! I like to be able to have the same sizes of sauce tomatoes for roasting. And the larger tomatoes are perfect for the salsa.

We pick, wash, cut in half, and roast or steam. My second oldest helps a lot with the cutting. My six year old likes to wash. And my 12 year old enjoys cranking the sauce maker. All hands on deck!

After the Romas are roasted, we drain them in a colander and sauce them with our sauce maker! It has come in very handy for preserving! The kids enjoy working it, which is lovely for me as well.

For the salsa, I am able to use homegrown onions, peppers, and garlic! I will post a recipe for this soon. NOTE: the above tomatoes are Cherokee Purple, hence their color not being bright red.

For the tomato sauce, we just cook it down to desired consistency and then pressure can it. You can also water bath can it! But I prefer being able to stack my pint jars which can only be done when pressure canning.

I like to label my jars with pretty labels. I can write on them before sticking them into the jars. It’s always good to know exactly what’s in a jar. And then, if I give something away, the receiver also knows what it is and how old it is.

Now this winter and into next spring we will hopefully have tomato sauce readily usable! I can turn it into tomato soup, pasta sauce, pizza sauce, or add to chili! The salsa is delicious with many meals. More on that to come.

How do you preserve tomatoes?