CanningUSA.com

Blanching and Peeling Tomatoes and Fruits

Blanching and peeling is absolutely necessary if fruit has been treated with insecticides or pesticides as skin absorbs and retains chemicals. For home canning, we recommend using organic products to avoid chemical worries.

Blanching before peeling is the easiest and fastest method for large quantities of fruit. This method is identical for tomatoes, apricots and peaches and can be seen in our free Videos 2 and 3.

1. For this work area, there are a cutting board with a paring knife plus a cutting knife. The sink is filled with cold water and the blanching basket is to the left of the sink. There is a sack to discard peels and seeds. Left handed cooks may wish to reverse the work area.	2. Cut out the stem portion of tomatoes, while your water is heating.	3. On the bottom of the fruit score a cross hair then place it into the blanching basket. Be careful to not overfill the blanching basket as it will cool the boiling water, reducing the time for the skin to loosen.
4. Place the blanching basket into boiling water. This may be done with tongs if a basket is not available.	5. After about one minute the skin should begin lifting off. Remove the basket, being careful to not burn yourself, using tongs. Carry the basket to the sink with a plate underneath to not soil the floor.	6. Place the fruit in cold water.
7. After the fruit has cooled remove the skin by simply pulling at the crosshair.	8. If deseeding, cut the fruit in half from side-to-side for most tomatoes or from top to bottom for Roma tomatoes or fruit with pits.	9. Remove seeds with thumb or fingers.
10. As an alternative you may squeeze the seeds out.	11. After chopping tomatoes, add them directly into the already cooking sauce. When working in batches, remove the next batch of fruit from boiling water at this time (Step 5).