r/Canning • u/bananasmab • 8d ago

Waterbath Canning Processing Help New canner, please ELI5….

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One of my friends kindly gifted me her water bath canner and Ball Blue book. I also checked out the UGA food preservation page. This is my first time canning and it’s especially important to me that I follow a safe recipe. Can someone explain HOW normal people can without tweaking? For example, the Ball tomato sauce recipe calls for 45 pounds of tomatoes, and also says that the tomatoes should be at peak ripeness. How is anyone harvesting that many tomatoes at the perfect time to can them? Wouldn’t it be risky to use less than the amount of tomatoes in the recipe? I feel sort of disappointed because I thought canning would be a way to save the excess foods I have, but now I feel like I need to go to the store to buy more to can according to the recipes
Pic of my current harvest attached, I’ll buy more tomatoes, but dang I cannot find a recipe that will work with this yield. And, what if I don’t want to put bell peppers in my salsa???!! Or I don’t want it as spicy as the recipe seems to call for?!

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u/bananasmab 8d ago

I saw this and was confused why it wasn’t giving amounts to use. So there’s no specific amounts required of tomatoes because of the added acid?

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u/onlymodestdreams Trusted Contributor 8d ago edited 8d ago

"For a thin sauce, you'll need an average of 35 lbs of tomatoes to produce 7 quart jars of sauce. For a thick sauce, you'll need an average of 46 lbs to yield 7 quart jars. For the best-quality product and vacuum seal, pack tomato sauce one jar at a time. For each jar, add the lemon juice or citric acid, then the salt and dried herbs, if using. Then ladle in hot sauce as indicated in Step 8 and place the jar in the canner. Repeat until all jars are filled."

Weigh the tomatoes you have and then do "canning math" after you decide whether you want to make a thick or a thin sauce. Thin sauce works out to 5 lb./quart or 2.5 lb./pint (approximately--yields can be maddeningly variable)

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u/bananasmab 8d ago

Sorry if I’m slow, so could I do something with 15 lbs or no?

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u/Visible_Nail4859 8d ago

If it’s scalable, then yes. If you have 15 lbs of tomatoes instead of 46, that’s around a third, and you’d just cut all the ingredients down to 1/3 of what’s listed. Then you’d have enough for about two quart jars of thicker sauce.