What To Do With So Many Tomatoes?

It’s that time of the year again!

🍅Tomato extravaganza!🍅 😜

🔎 Blog guide – If you want to:

• go directly to the recipes  ➡ click here
• have a look at my tomato garden. ➡ click here
• know some tomato facts. ➡ click here

Receitas em Português ➡ clica aqui

🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

🌱 In the Garden! 🌱

The garden is mainly my mom’s hobby, but I’ve always been a part of the process. There is nothing better than going to the backyard supermarket!🛒 Hehe

It’s fairly easy to grow tomatoes. We bought the small plants and transplanted them into our garden. You can go to your local nursery and buy them. They come in little pots like you can see below:

You can see a brief schematic of how we did it. If you need more details you can always visit the Farmers Almanac here.

This is the garden once we planted the tomatoes. As you can see in the image below we added sticks near the plant, so once they grew tall we can tie them to the stick, so they don’t fall.

We watered the plants every other day unless it was too hot then we would water every day. We would water them early morning around 6:30 am before going to work. This will allow the water to run down into the soil and reach the roots of the plant. If you water them at knight let say 8:00 pm, most probably because of the heat it can cause the water to evaporate before the plants can absorb it and then it would just be a waste of water… 💦💦💦

Fast forward to three months later and look how beautiful they grew!

Here is a video! 🎥 ⬇

Did You know❔

🍅 Tomatoes are a big part of the famously healthy Mediterranean diet. Many Portuguese dishes (link Portuguese recipe playlist), for example, call for tomatoes or tomato paste or sauce.

🍅 There are over 10,000 varieties of tomato, these come in a variety of colors including pink, purple, black, yellow and white.

🍅 Some recent studies have found that people who most closely follow the Mediterranean diet have lower death rates from heart disease and cancer.

🍅  Lycopene is the most abundant plant compound in tomatoes. It is found in the highest amounts in tomato products, such as ketchup, tomato juice, and tomato-based sauces.

🍅  Tomatoes contain all three high-powered antioxidants: beta-carotene, vitamin E, and vitamin C.

🍅  Tomatoes are rich in potassium, a mineral most of us don’t get enough of.

🍅 There’s almost twice the amount of vitamin C and beta-carotene in a homegrown, vein-ripened tomato as in a commercial market tomato that is picked “mature-green” and gas ripened with ethylene.

🍅  When tomatoes are eaten along with healthier fats, like avocado or olive oil, the body’s absorption of the carotenoid phytochemicals in tomatoes can increase by two to 15 times.

🍅 Tomato peels contribute a high concentration of the carotenoids found in tomatoes. The amount of carotenoids absorbed by human intestinal cells was much greater with tomato paste enriched with tomato peels compared to tomato paste without peels. The tomato skin also holds most of the flavonols.

References

So many tomatoes, what to do with them?

There are so many things you can do with the tomatoes besides just eating them fresh on your salad or to top your bruschetta.

You can make:

• • tomato sauce ➡ click here
  • tomato jam ➡ click here

Or you can freeze tomatoes for the whole year! Just wash and core them put them in a Ziploc bag, label the month and year, and put them in the freezer. You can keep them for up to 6 months.

⚠ Discloser about canning method: I’m not a canning expert, this is just how we have done these recipes for a long time without any problems. (but I am thinking of trying the pressure cooker method.)

Other Tomato Recipes:

• tomato bruschetta ➡ click here

Tomato Sauce-EN

• Servings: 5-6 jars of 1 Liter
• Time: 2hr 30mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

This tomato sauce recipe was given to my mother by an Italian nonna about 40 years ago. My mom has been making this sauce ever since. It’s practically the only one we use. Once we put the sauce in the jars, we freeze them. Yes, we put the jars in the freezer. Whenever we need them, we just take one out and let it defrost slowly inside the fridge, and then the countertop. Let’s say you need it for dinner, I would remove it from the freezer early morning, so about 8 – 10h prior.

Ingredients

• 2 kg of tomatoes
• 2 onions
• 4 garlic cloves
• ¼ cup of Olive oil
• 1 hand full of oregano and basil
• 2 bottles of tomato pure (690g)
• Salt to taste(aprox. 4 tbsp)
• black pepper to taste (1/2 tsp)
• 3 tbsp of sugar

Directions

1. Prep tomatoes, wash them and cut them. Chop onions and garlic.
2. Put onions and garlic in a pan with the olive oil, let it simmer medium heat until they are translucent.
3. Add tomatoes, herbs, tomato puree, salt, and black pepper. Let it cook for 1 hour.
4. Blend everything very well. Add sugar. Leave it for another hour medium heat.
5. Meantime taste the sauce make sure there is enough salt.
6. While your tomato sauce is getting ready prep your jars.
7. Fill in jars, close lid, and turn them upside down to seal.

Here is the video! 🎥 ⬇

Tomato Jam - EN

• Servings: 9 jars of 125 mL
• Time: 1hr 30mins
• Difficulty: easy
• Print

This tomato jam is my mom’s recipe. After trial and error, this is the recipe that we have been doing for quite some time now. The main method here is for every kilo of tomatoes you need a kilo of sugar. Depending on how sweet you like your jam you can remove up to 500 g from the recipe. Below you can see that I have removed 200 g from the original sugar 1:1 ratio, because i find it too sweet when using the 1:1 ratio.

Ingredients

• 2kg of tomatoes
• 1.8kg of sugar
• Peel & juice of 1 lemon
• Peel of 1 orange
• 2 cinnamon sticks

Directions

1. Prep tomatoes, wash them and cut them.
2. Put prepared tomato, sugar, peels of both orange and lemon, lemon juice, and cinnamon sticks in a pot on medium heat.
3. Let it boil for about 30 min. then blend it very well.
4. Let it cook until it reaches 105°C. Remove from heat.
5. Fill in jars (that have been previously prepared)
6. Turn jars upside down to seal the jar.
7. Keep jars in a cool place.

Here is the video! 🎥 ⬇

🇵🇹 Receitas em Português 🇵🇹

Molho de Tomate-PT

• Servings: 5-6 frascos of 1 Litro
• Time: 2hr 30mins
• Difficulty: fácil
• Print

Esta receita de molho de tomate foi dada à minha mãe por uma avó italiana há cerca de 40 anos. A minha mãe tem feito este molho desde sempre. É praticamente o único que usamos. Assim que o molho está nos frascos, nós colocamos os frascos no congelador . Sim, colocamos os frascos no congelador. Sempre que precisamos deles, apenas retiramos um e deixamos descongelar lentamente dentro do frigorifico, e depois deixamos em temperatura ambient. Quando precisares do molho basta retirar do congelador 8 – 10 horas antes.

Ingredients

• 2 kg de tomates
• 2 cebolas
• 4 dentes de alho
• ¼ copo de azeite
• 1 mão cheia de oreganos e manjericão fresco
• 2 frascos de pure de tomate (690g)
• Sal a gosto (aprox. 4 colheres de sopa)
• pimenta preta a gosto (1/2 colher de chá)
• 3 colheres de sopa de açúcar

Directions

1. Prepara os tomates, lave-os e corte-os. Pique as cebolas e o alho.
2. Coloque as cebolas e o alho numa panela com azeite, deixe ferver em lume médio até a cebola ficar translúcida.
3. Adiciona os tomates, ervas aromáticas, purê de tomate, sal e pimenta preta. Deixe cozinhar por 1 hora.
4. Passar pela varinha mágica. Adicione açúcar. Deixe por mais uma hora em lume médio.
5. Entretanto, prova o molho e verifica se tem sal suficiente.
6. Enquanto o molho de tomate esta acabar de fazer, vai preparando os frascos.
7. Enche os frascos, feche a tampa e vire-os de cabeça para baixo para selar.

Para veres o video da receita clica aqui.

Doce de Tomate - PT

• Servings: 9 frascos de 125 mL
• Time: 1hr 30mins
• Difficulty: fácil
• Print

Este doce de tomate é uma receita da minha mãe. Após muitas tentativas, esta é a receita que temos feito há algum tempo.
O método é, para cada quilo de tomate precisas de um quilo de açúcar. Dependendo de como gostas do teu doce, podes remover até 500 g da receita. Abaixo podes ver que removi 200 g da proporção original de açúcar 1: 1, eu acho muito doce quando se usa a proporção 1: 1.

Ingredients

• 2 kg de tomate
• 1.8 kg de açúcar
• Casca e sumo de 1 limão
• Casca de 1 laranja
• 2 paus de canela

Directions

1. Prepare os tomates, lave-os e corte-os.
2. Coloque o tomate preparado, o açúcar, as cascas de laranja e limão, o sumo de limão e os paus de canela numa panela em lume médio.
3. Deixe ferver por cerca de 30 min. depois passar pela varinha mágica, muito bem.
4. Deixe cozinhar até atingir 105°C. Retire do lume.
5. Encher os frascos (que foram previamente preparados)
6. Vire os frascos de cabeça para baixo para selar o frasco.
7. Mantenha os frascos num local fresco.

Para veres o video da receita clica aqui.

📖  References 📖

• https://www.almanac.com/plant/tomatoes
• http://www.cmaj.ca/content/163/6/739.full#abstract-1
• https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/135/5/1226/4663991
• The Complete Book on Tomato & Tomato Products Manufacturing
• The Great Tomato Book