The virtual review: Canning homemade sauce

COLUMBUS, OH, UNITED STATES

09.25.2020

Story by Michelle Young 

Defense Finance and Accounting Service

My goal this week was to get some info on using a food grinder and check out some sauce recipes, but what I got was an afternoon of entertainment from two cultural die-hards who are winning at the internet.

This time of year, dad starts bringing over tomatoes by the bushel. I have about a day to decide sauce, juice, salsa, or nature chooses for me (and they rot).

Since we are out of sauce, the choice was simple. I needed to get started making some, but we had a problem. Dad's trusty, avocado green food mill, is either missing a piece since using it last or it's finally on its last leg. It was rubbing so much and not turning backward, we were losing patience.

Still not quite sure how, but Eric had the epiphany to use our food grinder attachment. At first, I was elated, but that quickly shifted to nervousness about getting it right and all the while the proverbial timer is ticking on the shelf life of my precious tomatoes.

Immediately, I got to looking online and found one of my new favorite humans, Jerry, from Fluty Lick Homestead. I found his video called How to Make Tomato Juice: Kitchenaid Food Strainer, which opens with bluegrass music and a view of his beautiful pantry of canned delicacies.

Jerry has the softest, most calm voice, with a strong Appalachian accent, and sounds like family—well, to me, because my mom's side is from there. This is the least presumptuous YouTuber I've ever watched. It's all him filming his juicing (and ultimately canning process).

He showed us the box, but then jumped right into his tomatoes cooking on the stove.

He walked us through step-by-step of how to assemble the strainer, which, if you've ever processed tomatoes, is one of the more physical and time-consuming steps.

Lick set up the bowls for juice and scraps, turned his food mill to "about a six" and starts dumping stewed tomatoes in the tray. At this point, not only am I mesmerized by the ease at which this process is working but I'm also thinking about the years of my life I've spent manually cranking tomatoes. It's a moment of both elation and regret.

Now that we have a pan of red, smooth, scalding hot liquid, the juice went back up onto the stove to get to a boil.

The video is edited, so it moves from scene to scene, in a kind of basic choppy format. However, it doesn't take away from the step-by-step format and charm of the video.

Next, after boiling five minutes, he skimmed off the foam, and we get down to putting juice in the jars. Lick adds one teaspoon pickling and canning salt into each hot, sterilized jar. Just for the sake of comparison, I was raised on just adding a teaspoon of salt to our jars. Not being especially chemically knowledgeable, I'm not sure if there is a flavor difference, but he did mention achieving the correct acidity level. He also mentioned you could use lemon juice as a sub for this step.

Lick has a beautiful glass jar funnel that I immediately coveted. It made a clinking sound when he ladled it in the jars and you could see it splashing in and steaming it up.

As he filled the jars, he tossed out ideas to make V8, vegetable soup, tomato sauce, etc. Again, no rush or immediacy, just ladling the juice into the jars.

"I've got my water bath canner on the burner," Lick says, as he finishes up, so logically, the next step is he placed the four-quart jars into his canner—though he didn't show us that step. He jumps right to his gingham tablecloth covered patio table with his finished juice and other canning spoils.

It was a really relaxing and nice 12-minute vid that taught me some new techniques and got me ready for canning; however, since I wanted to make sauce and not just juice, my work wasn't done yet.

I wanted to check out new sauce recipes. A few more searches and I found an adorable Italian grandmother who just captivated me and I never looked at another sauce video. The video was literally labeled Italian Grandma Makes Canned Tomato Sauce. Perfect.

Gina is very excited, her words, and has a seriously thick Italian accent, like the one Joey would imitate on Friends when he was making fun of his Italian family. She's in what seems to be a cinder block basement with two stoves and a furnace and duct work over to the side.

She jumps right in, cutting up her tomatoes, and I had to watch. Closely. Gina is moving so fast and speaking so quickly, along with her accent and inflection, I found myself rewinding the video a lot.

"This one like this, no good," Gina says, as she shows us trimming the Roma's with bad spots on them. When she gets half a bowl full, she adds "some" salt. There is no measuring with Gina. Literally "not too much," then tosses it around.

I wish I had a Gina; she's outstanding.

I'm not kidding; at this point we get subtitles. She was only saying to add a little water, but it's with hand gestures and blending words, so clearly, the editor thought we needed some help with Gina-ese. Her table is covered now with so many pots of tomatoes I can't count. There has to be hundreds of cut tomatoes.

The tomatoes went into a comically large, stainless pot, which is so tall, Gina gets up on some kind of makeshift step/ stool combination to be able to reach it. She headed into the pot with some combination of a bat, broom handle, Captain Caveman style club, and spoon and said, "I'm a little short, that's why I have this," and points to her riser.

After her tomatoes had cooked down, she moves on to the straining/ milling step that Lick already showed me. She passes her tomatoes through the mill twice, as Lick did. Gina takes the sauce back to the stove again and told us we needed to boil down for another hour, so we're up to two to three hours so far on cooking time.

Gina has dozens of clean mason jars out on her counter now. I'm starting to wonder if we're going to season this—or did I miss a step in translation?

"Basilica," she says as she waved at the jars, I'm not following. The subtitle pops up, "Fresh Basil added to jars." Oh ok! Got it! Green things that look like leaves that I now understood to be whole, fresh basil leaves are already in the jars.

She pans out the lava-like bubbling sauce perfectly into the jars, puts a lid on them, then a ring, then tightens. All the while, she was speaking about keeping them hot, doing things right away, and her voice was a lovely mixture of Italian and English, which at 12 minutes into the video, (and subtitle help) I was starting to understand.

Next, she takes the jars over to a table, turns them upside down and covers them with a comforter, not even kidding. "They are finishing boiling in the jars. Tomorrow morning when I come and get up, I'll put them on the shelf. Tonight they are sleeping here," she says.

We cut to the next morning. Gina, in a fresh red blouse now, uncovers her treasure. She showed us how to check each lid to see if it makes noise or not, which tells us if they sealed and safely can be stored.

Finally, she showed us her sauce shelves, with more pride than a new parent showing off their newborn. Rows and rows of jars, representing countless hours of labor and love. She's like Vanna White without the letter turning.

One last note, she does kind of resolve a bit of mystery for me. She explains that she makes plain sauce, "You can add oregano, garlic, or whatever you like, depending on what dish you're making." It seems obvious, but honestly, I didn't think about seasoning my sauces differently; maybe I'm the only one?

She wraps up her 17 minutes of video thanking her daughter Maria, America, and some more family. After she told us goodbye, there was an additional two minutes of video where she demonstrated a couple of different strainers, but I was good with what I'd learned.

If you have any interest in making homemade sauce, and/or jarring and canning it, please check these out. I know there are many guidelines for canning and prepping other types of foods, but this is a good start and with tomatoes being a high acidic fruit to start with, it's pretty forgiving.

What would you like me to virtually visit or try out next? Email me at [e-mail] and give me your suggestions. Your dedicated online review partner—Micki

• Date Taken: 09.25.2020
• Date Posted: 12.28.2020 12:48
• Story ID: 385882
• Location: COLUMBUS, OH, US