# Planning a canning party



## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

Hello, I would like to organize a canning party this summer. I'm expecting 3-5 people all of whom have some-to lots of experience. We would like to do tomatoes. We need quartered, lots of sauce and paste, and crushed. I'm thinking we should run batches through the Victorio and start paste/sauce first, skimming off "broth" to pack the quarters in. While the sauce/ paste cooks down we will cook/ process the crushed tomatoes. Once the crushed are cooling we would start the quarters, then pull sauce once it's correct thickness. I'm hoping by the time we get all the other stuff processed the paste should be thick enough. We should have space to run 2 WB canners at a time plus 2 other burners. 
Does this seem reasonable? I would like to process about 100 quarts each of quartered and crushed, 100 pints sauce, 50 quarts sauce, 100 half pints paste. (This is a guess, my family used 1/4 of this this year and are going to run out by the end of this month and thus quantity is for 2 big families and 2 couples). 
I have never canned with others before, I'm looking for suggestions to make this go smoothly! Thank you
- we are using new jars so I'm not worried about sterilizing but I need to figure out a way to heat them up that doesn't involve a dishwasher.


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## TerriLynn (Oct 10, 2009)

Are you thinking that you want to do this all in one day? That's pretty ambitious and with 1 stove you are going to need more time.

That being said, I would round up all the electric turkey roasters you can. I have 3 and use mine frequently when canning. They hold 22 quarts each. I cook my sauce down in them. Heat cranked all the way up and leave the lid off.


They are also good to have hot water going in. You could heat your jars up that way and free up a burner.


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

Vickivail98 said:


> - we are using new jars so I'm not worried about sterilizing but I need to figure out a way to heat them up that doesn't involve a dishwasher.


New jars aren't sterile.


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## Marilyn (Aug 2, 2006)

There's no telling what kind of film or residue could be on/in new jars. They need a good washing in hot soapy water. Then you could keep them warm in the oven.

We did something like this with A*bounding* A*cres* this past fall. I will contact her to see if she can add her point of view. As I remember it, she purchased a great many cases of tomatoes from a local grower, as well as numerous cases of new jars. At the end of the process, the cost per case of tomato sauce was determined and passed along.

They got a very good start on cooking the sauce down outdoors in their maple syrup pans over a wood fire. Even with that, a large WB canner and a pot or two of sauce for finishing took up all available kitchen stove space. *TerriLynn's* idea to use electric roasters is wonderful!

One thing that we did a little differently, was to use the skins. After washing the tomates, we buzzed them in a VitaMix, then out to the fire. Quicker than using the Victorio Strainer, plus we got the added nutrients from the skins

Keeping families fed is also an issue that you want to consider since the canning party will last _at least_ all day. *Abounding* *Acres* prepared food ahead and participants also pitched in.

We were exhausted at the end of the day, but had a great time visiting with others and working together. As far as efficiency of scale - I'm not sure about that, perhaps *Abounding* *Acres* can fill us in. I'm sure she had tomato juice clean-up from her dining room, kitchen and entry way the next day  We tried to stay on top of it as we worked, but it just APPEARED constantly!


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## Janis R (Jun 27, 2013)

Some of the new canning sites say you don't have to sterilize new jars but I would at minimum wash them ahead of time, put lid on loosely, heat them up before you use them.
There always seems to be a film on them and well you don't know what the conditions are in the cannery (did that person wash their hands after they went to the restroom)

Setting up an assembly line, washing maters, dunking maters to get skin off, coring etc. works real well. Some prior prepping is good also.
You can look into renting a industrial kitchen, church or a restaurant or borrow extra propane burners, induction burners and big nesco cooker is good to cook down the sauce.

You can heat up the jars in the oven


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## Alder (Aug 18, 2014)

Yeeks. Good luck. I like to concentrate on what I'm doing when I can, and having a bunch of people around to distract me doesn't sound very productive. Different personalities I guess.

BTW, I cook down my sauce in old electric frying pans and electric roasters. You can run them all night just barely steaming and they won't burn. It takes a long time to make thick sauce and paste.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

I too would worry that your time frame isn't enough for the tomato sauce and especially the paste to cook down.

I hate to be a kill joy but, The hours in the day are also not enough for the processing of all those jars. 
Your goal is 250 quarts. With 2 canners you are looking at 125 quart jars per canner, 8 per load if you are using standard size water bath for 45 minutes each load. That's 16 loads in each canner and means that if you fill the canner as you empty the canner from the previous load, you would can all your quarts in 12 hours. obviously the additional loads of pints and half pints are additional hours not to mention your prep time.

It seems to me like the idea is great but you need either more canners or more days and I would want to have the sauce ready before people got there so that you could can it the same day.


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## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

Lots of great points! I should have explained a few things better- Re reading my original post I put in my goal but didn't make clear I know that's way too many jars for one day! Any ideas how many we should shoot for? I will still have all those jars at the house but need to adjust the produce. We have two separate heating stations, each of which holds a canner and two additional pans. The jars will be pre-washed and lids separated beforehand. 

I never though to use roasters for sauce/ paste. Between us we have 5 of the big ones and more crock pots than a kitchen store. 

I do have two of the people staying at the house with me so we could jump start the day before. If we got the paste going, would it be ready the next day? I usually wash the tomatoes, core, squeeze seeds into a big bowl to run through victorio at the end, and throw the rest in to start cooking, later I run my stick blender through it, and add in the very flavorful gel from the seeds back in. I'm not super picky about perfect smoothness in paste and it's the only product that I include skins in. I have always cooked them down until bedtime then refrigerated overnight, ladled off the juice then finished up the cooking. 

We are sending all children and non-participating spouses to a water park for the weekend so it's just us to feed. We will have take out or eat from my overstuffed freezer. 

I do have two more canners but not separate hearing sources. If I move the paste and sauce to roasters my stove easily holds two WB's but the other source is too narrow. 

I need to check my records to see what proportions I got last year per bushel. It seems like there is always too much thin juice (which I only use for canning venison and beef) and not enough paste. Maybe we should focus on getting lots of paste done since it's always the first thing we run out of (besides blueberries). 

I am not comfortable using a dry method to heat jars so I need to figure that out. If you used a roaster do you start each batch in tap hot water and then let them get to temp?

Thank goodness I don't need to do salsa anymore!!

I am definitely going to fire up the computer and look at my records so I can plan this out better. Thank you for all the great tips, I'll post my finalized plan as soon as I figure it out.


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## MoCat (Nov 7, 2012)

Do you have a grill/rocket stove/camp stove outside that you could put a wb on? That would give you an extra burner or two.

A large crock pot of water, on high might be hot enough to heat up the jars.


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## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

MoCat, I actually do have a big grill and a fire pit with a heavy cooking grate. I never thought about using them! Do you think they would work for heating jars? I can see that being a real bottleneck area.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

I'm not sure if this would help you or not...the water that comes out of my sink will get very hot (hot enough that I cannot keep my hands in without it hurting) i will sometimes use this water to keep already clean jars warm. 

I personally accomplish this because my hot water heater is tied to a wood stove and the water gets up to 200 degrees before cool water begins to be added to keep it from boiling. 

perhaps if you could nudge up your hot water heater temporarily so that your water is very hot when it comes out, jars could be kept in the sink or bathtub...a place where you can constantly add hot water to keep it hot and drain used water.

This would allow for larger capacities of jars to be heated at once and for your burners to not be taken up with jar heating but be used for things.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

Vickivail98 said:


> Lots of great points! I should have explained a few things better- Re reading my original post I put in my goal but didn't make clear I know that's way too many jars for one day! Any ideas how many we should shoot for? I will still have all those jars at the house but need to adjust the produce. We have two separate heating stations, each of which holds a canner and two additional pans.
> I do have two more canners but not separate hearing sources. If I move the paste and sauce to roasters my stove easily holds two WB's but the other source is too narrow.


It sounds like the maximum WB canners you can use is three due to limited heat sources.

IF you can start heating and canning first thing (meaning you have some things prepped from the night before) AND your group can keep enough available product to keep the canners running constantly, I would say 1 load per hour per canner...so 21 quarts an hour.

Remember that depending upon your type of rack, you might be able to put up to 12 half pint jars in per load.

its too bad you are only using WB canners. in this case, a pressure canner could be used to do larger quantities of pints and half pints in ten minutes between WB loads of quarts.


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## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

I do have a pressure canner as well but I've never used to for tomatoes before. Where would I find pressure canning times and temps? My recipes are all for WB


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/can3_tomato.html

They have the times listed based on what tomato product you're canning. Most only take 15 minutes or so and as you know, you can stack your little jars, getting more in per load.


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

I should add, there is no listing for tomato paste in that link. I'm not sure if The thickness of tomato paste changes the ability for it to be canned in a pressure canner. Perhaps someone else can answer that specific question.


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## Vickivail98 (Sep 26, 2014)

Thank you!


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## MoCat (Nov 7, 2012)

The best tomato paste I have had was made from dehydrated tomato powder. very easy to make just wash and slice your tomatoes and dehydrate them. Put in a blender and powder them. 1 part powder to 1 part water for paste, 4 parts water for sauce.


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## Macybaby (Jun 16, 2006)

I've found it's not significantly shorter to pressure can - because of the heat up and cool down. It takes about 30 mn for my pressure canner to return to 0 pressure, plus about 8 mn to get up steam, and then vent for 10 mn. So from lock down to removal, with a 15 mn processing, is over an hour. I do pressure can my tomatoes though, mostly because I can do a double stack of pints in the pressure canner. 

However, I prefer to use my pressure canners for WB canning, as the lids fit better and I don't have the boiling over problems. I remove the over pressure plug and don't lock the lids down.


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