How to Can Sauce From Frozen Tomatoes

Growing tomatoes is always an adventure. Some years they don’t produce well and some years you have an abundance! No matter how much and what you can, they just keep coming in, until you just have to say enough!

Two years ago, I had an abundance of tomatoes and I canned several of my recipes, including tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, salsa and pizza sauce. Then I just got tired of canning and ended up freezing many towards the end of the season.

To freeze tomatoes is very simple. Just put them in a ziplock bag and place in the freezer. Could not be more simple!

Like I said before, I froze these tomatoes two years ago and they still looked perfect. I had several bags.

I placed them in the sink to thaw.

After thawing, the tomatoes are pretty mushy, but that is just fine!

When I normally can my tomato sauces, I do not peel the tomatoes. When thawing frozen tomatoes, the skins come right off and probably better to remove them. I actually dehydrated all of my skins and made tomato powder.

I made pizza sauce for canning from the peeled and thawed tomatoes. I used my pizza sauce canning recipe.

The first step was to drain the moisture from the thawed tomatoes for a thicker, non-watery sauce. An advantage of using frozen tomatoes is that it is easy to separate the liquid.

First, when I peeled the tomatoes, I would squeeze what liquid out that I could, then I added the tomatoes to a colander by batches and pushed on the tomatoes to remove additional moisture and then let the tomatoes sit in the colander for a couple minutes to drain more.

After draining, add the thawed tomatoes to a food processor by batches and then add to a large pot, slow cooker or roasting pan. I chose to add to a slow cooker and let simmer for several hours to further thicken the sauce. I measured out the tomatoes after processing and adjusted my pizza sauce recipe by the amount.

I added the herbs included in the recipe to the sauce and let simmer a few hours. The sauce was already pretty thick.

Simmer until desired thickness.

Place the sauce into jars and can using the water bath method.

For instructions for beginning canning see my article here.

Enjoy

Enjoy those left-over frozen tomatoes and can your favorite sauces when you have more time! See all of my tomato canning recipes!

For more of my canning recipes and other favorite great recipes, plus posts about other homestead-type activities, such as gardening and raising chickens, go to my website at www.HawkPointHomestead.com. For updates, please follow my Facebook page at Hawk Point Hobby Homestead.

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