It's Not Easy Being Green

Yesterday we chronicled the fate of our fall tomato crop that was planted a month and a half late due to the floods of August 2016.  Because of the delay in planting, the fall tomatoes never ripened and instead froze solid overnight, still green as a gourd on Saturday, January 7th.  I began researching what you can do with green tomatoes.  Obviously you can fry them, but once they freeze, their cellular structure is compromised and don't stand up well to slicing.  What a waste!  Or was it?

It's not easy being green

I took the biggest ones and froze them on trays.  That way they can be frozen individually and put in gallon ziploc bags and can be used to cook with as you would ordinary red tomatoes.  I froze about 6 pounds this way.

Freezing them whole in the deep freeze

I found a neat article about something called Pomodori Verdi (essentially green tomato sauce) that educated me that you can use green tomato sauce the same exact way that that you can red ripe tomato sauce.  It is very simple to make.  I simply took 10 pounds of green tomatoes and put them in a big pot and added 2 cups of water and began to cook them over medium heat for about 45 minutes.

At about the 40 minute mark, I got a potato masher and began crushing the green tomatoes right there in the pot.

I used the immersion blender to really liquefy the green tomato sauce.  This is perhaps the neatest tool ever made since Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin.

Then I added 2 Tablespoons of  dried basil, 1 teaspoon full of minced garlic,2 teaspoons full of salt and some fresh ground criolla sella pepper we just made.  The immersion blender pureed all the tomato sauce and spices.

I used my canning funnel to pour the green tomato sauce into the sterilized canning jars.

I used the measuring stick to allow for 1/2 head space in the jars.

Finally, I added one Tablespoon of fresh-squeezed lemon juice onto the top of each jar of green tomato sauce.

I then put the gaskets and tattler lids on the jars, put the rings on and put them in a water bath canner for 35 minutes.  I pulled them out after the allotted time and let them sit for 24 hours.  The jars were sealed nicely and the color was an odd, but beautiful green - kind of strange to think that this is tomato sauce!

In all the 10 pounds of green tomatoes made 8 pints of Pomodori Verdi.

And added another variety (and color) to the canning pantry.

We've already used some of the pomodori verdi added to the chicken stock base for a homemade chicken noodle soup.  Very Good!  I'm anxious to try it over spaghetti. Although it is a shame we didn't get the tomato crop in earlier to be able to harvest a huge crop of RED tomatoes, I'm glad that we were able to find a delicious way to salvage the GREEN tomato crop.