What's Cooking on 1060: What To Do With Extra Tomatoes
By Hadas Kuznits
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - As tomato season draws to an end, what do you do with your surplus? There are actually many ways to save it and many things you can make.
Marisa McClellan -- author of Food in Jars, Preserving by the Pint and the soon to be released Canning with Natural Sweeteners -- says we have just a couple of weeks left of prime tomato season:
"Earlier in the season tomatoes feel precious and suddenly they are everywhere and abundant."
And, of course, you'll want to preserve those tomatoes heading into the fall, but "tomatoes are sort of tricky when it comes to preserving them," McClellan says, "because you have to have a certain amount of acid to make things safe when you're canning and tomatoes are actually a little bit low on acid so you always want to make sure that you're adding the required either lemon juice or citric acid or something like that to make sure that they're safe -- but you can always freeze."
She adds if you don't want to follow a tested recipe, tomatoes freeze beautifully. One recipe McClellan loves is tomato jam…
"…and this is one of the recipes that I get the most positive feedback on of anything I've ever created," she says.
You take five pounds of tomatoes, three cups of sugar, some lemon juice and spices of your choice. And then McClellan says:
"Chop up the tomatoes, fling everything in a big pot and cook it down until it's thick and sticky and maybe a little bit glossy and I always think of it as sort of gourmet ketchup but it can also go places you would never take ketchup so like with goat cheese or with a turkey sandwich. It's so delicious and unexpected!"
More tomato recipes for sauce, salsa, chutney, pickled tomatoes and more can be found online by CLICKING HERE.
Hear the full podcast (runs 16:13)…
And for this week, that's "What's Cooking on 1060!"
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