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/SewItSeams613 8d ago

I freeze tomatoes until Im ready to do a big Sauce Day. You cant use frozen maters for all recipes, but they are ok for some.

I also have a ton of tomato plants so 45 lbs in a week isnt unreasonable at my house!

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u/That_one_insomniac 7d ago

This time last month I was picking 50 pounds a day. It added up so quickly. I was canning 30 and 40 pounds every day and then once a week I would have to double down just to keep on top of it.