I’ve been freezing my tomatoes so I have enough to do a big lot of sauce. After realising we are eating a lot of salsa these days AND it is significantly more expensive than even premade pasta sauce (and loads more than home made from tinned tomatoes) I’m thinking I should use them to make salsa. I’ve looked for recioies today and not found many for jarring ,/ canning and one said ‘don’t use frozen’, yet another used tinned, which to my mind are more mushy! Has anyone done from frozen tomatoes successfully? Recipes? Frozen or not?
I’ve got half a large freezer half full of frozen tomato. Bit of a glut this year. Have you frozen the whole tomato or just the juice ? Whatever you make, you need to exclude the skin and seeds, which is much easier to do pre freezing. I have done salsa in the past with my own chillies, sweet peppers and onions. It’s really easy and there are many recipes online to choose from. I tend to avoid the US recipes that do everything in ‘cups’ as I find it intensely annoying .
Edit: Most of my frozen tomato juice will be made into tomato soup and tomato puree for pasta, pizza and lasagne etc.
I fell into that trap years ago after planting far more tomatoes that we could ever eat. They are still there scattered around various kitchen shelves waiting for me to pluck up the courage to open one.
If you’re making tomato sauce, as I do you do really need to get rid of skins and seeds. For chutney, seeds are ok, but skin is not. You could still make tomato sauce with them quite easily. Defrost and chop them into a large pan with a little salt (this helps extract the juice) and then heat to boil and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring and crushing as you go along. Then we strain them using a large fine sieve discarding the solids. The sieving is a bit laborious, and you have to crush them in the sieve a lot, but it works. Just make sure you use a solid metal sieve as a weaker one can break. We use the sauce for tomato soup, and you won’t find one that tastes anywhere near as good in a shop. We also use it, reduced, in curries and chillies, and reduced to a paste for pizzas.
I blitz them skins, seeds and all. If one wished to invite HRH to tea then I would then pass it through a tamis, but for daily use just blitz, reduce a bit, season to taste and add any extras that you desire.
Home grown tomatoes with taste will make great sauce whatever you do to them!
In my book skin’s OK for a bit of extra texture, but OTOH, If a recipe advises removing tomato skin, I love cutting the toms into segments and simply slicing the skin off with my wonderful Laguiole santoku chef’s knife with its laminated Damascus stainless steel blade - the best knife I’ve ever owned! Other knives will do the job, but very few better…
American recipes are great for lots of salsa variety because there’s such a huge community from Mexico and points south.
The skins of tomatoes stick between you’re teeth, at least they do with me. Same with the seeds. Also, the skins impart a bitter taste, which can counteract the natural sweetness of the tomato. At the end of the day, it’s a personal choice. I’m with you with potato skins. I don’t peel either. Coincidentally, potatoes and tomatoes are in the same family, nightshades !
Recipe 1: Homeade Salsa Ingredients:
8–10 tomatoes, divided - 1130g
2 medium carrots, peeled
2 jalapeños, de-seeded*
3–5 cloves of garlic
3 green onions
¼ bunch coriander
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tsp salt
Juice of ½ lemon
Juice of 1 lime Method
Wash all of the produce and roughly chop it into evenly sized pieces about 2-3” long.
Add half of the tomatoes to a large food processor and process until completely broken down, reminiscent of a sauce.
Add the green onion, coriander, and garlic to the food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the processor, if necessary.
Add the carrots and jalapeños and repeat the same process, then add the spices, salt, lemon juice, and lime juice. Pulse briefly to incorporate, and adjust seasonings to taste
Finally, add the remaining tomatoes and pulse a few times, until the tomatoes reach your desired consistency.
Recipe 2: Tomato and Cucumber Chutney
Ingredients
1 Whole cucumber- roughly chopped with skin
4 medium tomatoes - chopped
1 medium onion - chopped
1 clove garlic-peeled
handful chopped coriander leaves
Juice of 1 lemon
2 green chillies
1 tsp sugar
salt to taste
Method
In an electric liquidiser, blend all the above ingredients into a thick puree
Chill well before serving
Recipe 1 is one I got from somewhere - cannot remember where, Recipe 2 is a family recipe.
It’s really a recipe to start from. It has all the essential ingredients for a good salsa and very similar to what I have used in the past. But with that volume of ingredients, I would be using at least 10 times the ammount of jalapenos .I would also add a small ammount of cider vinegar.
Yes, it is very important to get it right if bottling/canning produce. One issue is with botulinum toxin, produced by the botulinum bacteria. This can be counteracted by heating the product above a certain temperature for a period of time. Acidic things also inhibit the bacteria, such as pickled onions and chillies. This is why I suggested adding cider vinegar to the recipe. Fortunately, botulism is very rare but it can happen and can be very serious.
Incidentally, I bottled some pickled chillies only a few hours ago.
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.I would also add a small ammount of cider vinegar.