Winter’s sudden arrival brings with it a return to my preferred daily schedule which begins the day by sitting in bed and writing. No one else is awake and interrupting my thoughts.
The longer than usual gardening season meant I had a lot of green tomatoes to pick after harvesting all the red ones. I think there are at least 30 pounds of them in the dining room right now. And I got to wondering if there was anything else I could do with them, besides the pies, jam, and salsa I’ve already tried and posted about.
Turns out there are quite a few uses for green tomatoes, but I’m not sure all of them are good.
One suggestion that caught my eye was green tomato sauce. I read the articles posted at the addresses listed in the References section below. Their odes to the wonders of green tomato sauce persuaded me to give this a try. However, I’ve learned a little bit over the years and decided it would be best to begin with a batch that used only 5 pounds of green tomatoes instead of the one that called for 30 pounds. Good call. But I thought that the larger batch looked a little yummier, so I just scaled it down.
Place everything except the bottled lemon juice in a large pot and stir well to combine. Cook over medium-low heat for 45-50 minutes, stirring often to prevent burning.
Blend the mixture with a stick blender or standing blender until smooth. Strain out the seeds if desired.
The directions posted for processing state to fill the jars, leaving ½” headspace and add 1 tablespoon of commercial lemon juice per pint jar and then process for 40 minutes in a boiling water bath, adjusting processing times for altitude, of course.
I wasn’t confident that the green tomato sauce would be acidic enough for boiling water bath processing to be safe. Before the lemon juice was added, the green tomato sauce registered 4.7 with my pH meter. After I added the lemon juice, the tomato sauce reached 3.9 pH, still not low enough to be safely processed by water bath canning. So keep that in mind if you decide to make this sauce.
Now, Farm Girl in the Making states that this sauce can be served as is. My decidedly non-scientific dips of the finger into the sauce said, “No way.”
I was already pretty nervous that this whole venture was a complete waste of time and tomatoes, but decided to follow Farm Girl’s suggestion of stirring in some heavy cream and Parmesan cheese. And then I added a little crumbled bacon since it was begging to be used and served the sauce over some angel hair pasta.
Family reviews: Aaron said it was a hard pass and definitely did not want the leftovers for his lunch the next day. I would call it a soft pass, and Becky was somewhere between the two of us. I was still hungry after my first helping, so I had some more, but sadly, it would take a lot more cream, cheese, and bacon to make this desirable, and by that point it’s easier to just omit the green tomato sauce altogether. While I could have eaten the leftovers, I knew I’d be looking to eat anything else first. Easier to just give it to the dogs directly. They appreciated it. They scarfed down all the sauce on both the regular pasta and the zoodles.
I don’t want to waste the green tomato sauce I already made, so I figure on freeze-drying it. I can add a little powdered sauce to soups over the next few months. I think times would have to be really desperate for me to can any green tomato sauce in the future—like the canning tumbleweeds kind of desperate experienced during the first Great Depression.
There are other ways to preserve green tomatoes, and I’ll be giving them a try over the next week.
Good to know, as three bowls of green tomatoes sit waiting in my mudroom.
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