How much is 18 pounds of tomatoes?

[jp1]

My CSA often offers opportunities to get veggies above and beyond what's in the weekly box. Just got an email from them offering 18 lbs of roma tomatoes for $20 next saturday. Just how much tomato sauce can I make with 18 lbs of tomatoes? We have enough space in the freezer for maybe 4 spaghetti sauce jar sized containers of sauce. Will 18 lbs make significantly more then that?

[bunnys]

I would say 18# would make more than that because spaghetti sauce jars are either 24 or 32 oz sized. Thirty-two ounces is 2 pounds which would mean you'd need 9 jars provided you didn't add anything to the tomatoes.

[creaker]

When I did this once (volunteered handing out CSA and took home bags of tomatoes), it cooks down quite a bit if you're shooting for a thick sauce. I was lazy and did not peel the tomatoes but I did remove the seeds.

[jp1]

Well, I went ahead and put in my order, since I also wanted a dozen of their eggs and we got two big batches of basil in this weeks box that'll be great in the sauce. I'm too lazy to peel them also. If I remove the seeds and make a thick sauce it'll cook down quite a lot. Worst case scenario I'll take some to work and give it to my friend Philip.

[CathyA]

Hmmm.....I would say it might cook down to something like 3-4 quart jars.

[jp1]

http://i1048.photobucket.com/albums/s363/jpatter492/th_IMG_0529.jpg (http://s1048.photobucket.com/albums/s363/jpatter492/?action=view&current=IMG_0529.jpg)

I didn't think to take a picture of them before cooking, but this is what they looked like after cooking them down by about 40%. (There were two pots originally).

And it was actually 20 lbs for $18, not the other way around.

[CathyA]

How many quarts did it make jp1?

[iris lily]

I made sp sauce twice in my life, and each time I was amazed about how much cooking time and tomatoes it took to get two quarts. I don't remember quantities, but I no longer do it even with a big supply of tomatoes. DH is canning tomatoes today, we've got a good crop in, but I won't be making sauce again. I buy it and augment it with canned or frozen tomatoes from our garden to make it chunky.

[jp1]

It ended up being just shy of 7 quarts.

[rodeosweetheart]

Awesome!

I am always surprised by how many tomatoes it takes to make two little jars of tomato sauce--I got a grocery bag full free last week from a nice man at a meeting, and it made two little jars.

With fresh basil and oregano, it was just about the best tomato sauce ever, and we had spaghetti one night and portabello mushroom lasagna for two dinners. And that was just one jar.

So it goes a long way. . .

[CathyA]

That ended up being a pretty good amount.

[Blackdog Lin]

From "Putting Food By" Fifth Edition, by J Green et al (which I'm perusing this week, a new purchase of mine to help us with getting the most, and the safest, out of our new pressure canner):

"The average bushel of tomatoes weights about 53 pounds, and will yield.....blah blah.....it takes 2 1/2 to 3 pounds of fresh tomatoes to do 1 quart."

A decent rule of thumb that I'll try to remember. But we're usually canning salsa or spaghetti sauce, that needs to cook down, so I need to work on a personal household formula to know roughly how many tomatoes equate to how much canned goods. So far, our formula is "if the kitchen island is 3/4 covered with tomatoes, then that's more than enough to do a batch of salsa, of which we will use 3/4 or more of the tomatoes laying there, which should get us our full pressure-canner batch of 14 pints."

I'll have to let you know. The stuff is cooking, and the canner is heating, as I type here.

Congrats on your tomato preserving.....it's addictive, isn't it?.....And oh so fresh and good.....