No time to can your tomatoes? Not to worry! I will show you what I’m doing this year to preserve our harvest, using an Instant Pot!
This year has been crazy! Truly. Seems like we need 28 hours in a day lately! So canning our tomato harvest this summer is just not in the cards. But I sure don’t want to toss the harvest. Plus Gigi and the girls have had their fill of tomaotes… what to do?
Enter my faithful friend, the Instant Pot!
I knew I didn’t want to freeze them whole, that takes too much room. So why not break them down in order to get them ready for canning at a later time. Ta Da! By simply popping them into the Instant Pot and pressure cooking them, I have already breezed by that step and when the day comes to process them in the canner, there’s have one less thing to do!
Here’s a video to show you just what I did:
Once they were finished, I froze them. When the time comes to defrost and can them, I will run them through the food mill to remove any unwanted skin or seeds. I’m not too particular about these things and the food mill tends to remove everything that we don’t want in our sauces.
Easy Peasy right? I am using the Instant Pot for more and more time saving procedures. If you like to save time and want to preserve things using an Instant Pot be sure to check out this post about balsamic onions or this one about preserving your hot peppers as hot sauce!
A quick way to freeze your tomato harvest for canning at a later date.
- Garden Fresh Tomatoes Pick enough to fill your size Instant Pot. Do not go over the MAX line.
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Wash, de-stem and quarter your larger tomatoes. Put into the Instant Pot and set to Normal & Manual/Pressure Cook.
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Let cook for 20 minutes and then natural release for 10 minutes. Once 10 minutes is up use a wood spoon or other long handle to move pressure valve to release. Careful of escaping steam.
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Allow tomatoes to cool then transfer into freezer containers or bags and freeze.
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Take out of freezer when ready to can, defrost and follow you canning recipe instructions or use as stewed tomatoes as they are.
What’s your quick step to preserve the harvest?
PIN ME!
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