How do you like to add tomatoes to your routine dishes? Do you use canned tomatoes or raw tomatoes? If you’re someone who is habitual of buying tomato cans from the market, have you ever wondered how many tomatoes are in a can? And if you’re canning tomatoes at home, how many tomatoes can you pack within a single canning glass jar?
Confusions like this are a part of everyone’s life and we’re here to help you out of your miseries.
Canning Tomatoes At Home
As you know, tomatoes are low-acid vegetables. This means that tomatoes need to be canned very carefully under the conditions of high temperature and pressure. Using a regular pot will not be suitable to can those fresh tomatoes from your garden. Instead, you can use a pressure canner to can tomatoes. But pressure canner is not the only way to get those tomatoes all canned up in a jar. If you don’t have a pressure canner, you can also use a pressure cooker.
Yes! the same pressure cooker that you usually use to cook your daily meals. A pressure cooker is designed to cook your food quicker and faster. For this purpose, you have to pour water inside it and this water is responsible for providing the high temperature and pressure conditions. When it is converted into steam and there’s no way the steam can escape, this steam provides the much-needed high temperature required to seal the canning glass jars filled with tomatoes.
How Many Tomatoes Can Be Filled In A Can?
Before canning all those tomatoes from your house garden, you first need to prep things and get everything nice and ready. These things that I’m talking about including your crockery, the special canning glass jars, and a pressure canner or a pressure cooker whatever you have to can the jars. But as we speak, you might be wondering how many canning glass jars will you need? And how many tomatoes can fit in a jar?
Well, that depends on the fact that how many tomatoes do you actually have in your home garden? And how many of them would you like to can up into the glass jars for preservation? Generally, when you are canning tomatoes, you need to fill glass jars in such a way that no spaces or voids should be left within the jar except near its mouth where you have to leave an inch of space. Also, when you buy a tomato paste can from the market, there is no count of tomatoes written on it so how would you know the count of tomatoes in that can.
Tomato Stats
Digging a little deeper into the matter, we have come to a realization that the actual risk of a tomato that purely fresh is 5% on average, and when the tomatoes are converted into tomato paste, the same tomato Brix becomes 28%—38%. Do you know what this means? It means that the internal content present in the tomato becomes 6 times closer and denser when its water content is evaporated. So, according to this technique when talking about the tomato paste processing, we can say that the estimated tomato input to output ratio will be 6 to 1.
To make it simpler for you, we have drawn out some easy canning guidelines. Just follow these guidelines and you’re good to can your garden tomatoes at home like a pro.
- For preparing a 28-ounce can of tomato paste, use about 10 to 12 whole tomatoes that should be peeled. These should be about 2 pounds tomatoes in weight.
- For preparing a 14 and a half ounce can that is 14.5 ounces can of tomato paste, you will be needing 5 to 6 whole peeled tomatoes. These should be about 1 pound in weight.
Conclusion
The above-mentioned stats will help you determine how many tomatoes are filled in a can. Follow the guidelines whenever you’re confused about the quantity of either the tomatoes or the canning glass jars.
So, this is how you can measure the total count of your tomatoes and the total number of canning glass jars that you will need to fill them in.