No special equipment is needed to successfully home can all manner of fruits.
Canning at home is a great way to preserve fruit (including tomatoes) in times of plenty. There are several methods you can use to can fruit at home. The most common are cold water baths, oven, and hot water bath methods.
Here, we’ll talk about the hot water bath method of home canning. This method requires no special skills and certainly no special equipment. If you are new to home canning this is definitely the way to start!
Vegetables are low in acid and difficult to sterilize so they are best preserved cooked (such as in chutneys) or pickled in alcohol, salt or vinegar (such as dill pickles). Fruit, however, has a much higher acidity and is therefore easy to can at home safely.
In the UK we call canning bottling so I will use the terms interchangeably here.
How to Can Fruit?
- Prepare your firm, ripe fruit. Make sure it is clean, peeled and pitted if desired, and that any blemishes have been removed. Seriously over-ripe or damaged fruits should not be bottled at home as they will not store well and may spoil the rest of the batch.
- Now pack your prepared fruit into warm, sterilized jars. Pack the jars as tightly as possible and leave 1 cm (about a half-inch) of space between the contents and the top of the jar.
- Top up the jar with a little lemon juice (1/2 tbsp for each liter/quart of fruit) and a warm sugar syrup. You can make sugar syrup by heating sugar and water; different fruits require more or less sugar syrup.
- Prepare a large saucepan by putting a clean cloth or block of wood in its base and filling with warm water.
- Put the lids on loosely and put the filled jars into your prepared pan of warm water. If you’re worried about the jars jostling about and banging each other, wrap each one in a little newspaper or cloth.
- The water in the saucepan should cover the lid of each jar.
- Slowly bring the pan to the boil.
- Simmer for the required length of time, then remove the jars and tighten their lids.
- The bottled fruit will store well for up to a year in the dark.
How to Can Tomatoes?
Tomatoes are perhaps the most useful fruit to home can because they can be used in so many ways, from pasta sauces to stews and soups. To bottle tomatoes at home simply follow the procedure above, adding a pinch of salt and warm water to the jars rather than sugar syrup.
How Long to Simmer?
Tomatoes need around 40 minutes.
Soft fruit and apple slices need around 2 minutes.
Stone and citrus fruit need to simmer for around 10 minutes.
Simmering fruit when home bottling is the action that sterilizes the fruit, helping it stay in good condition over time. Simmering for too long will, in effect “cook” the fruit for longer than is ideal but will not affect its storing capacity. Simmering for too short a time is more problematic as you may not sterilize the fruit sufficiently and it may spoil. So, if in doubt simmer for a longer, not shorter time.
There also are many reliable sources of information and recipes you can consult such as your local extension service or the standby canning manual Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving.
