Fire roasting tomatos for canning questions

[blurose]

I'm gonna get a real bumper crop of my San Marsano tomatos this year and want to can them as fire-roasted, crushed tomatos as this is the form I use the most. I've canned them and roasted them before, but never canned the roasted ones. I usually roast them in a pan on the closed BBQ grill, but I don't usually peel them when I use them right away. Should I peel them before running them through the food mill, or will the food mill just take care of the skin and seeds for me? I've not had much experience with using a food mill. Is it likely to just turn them into puree instead of the "crushed" form I'm looking for? Should I put them through a chen***(however you spell that) instead?

 

[patandchickens]

I've canned oven-roasted tomatoes, that might be a little bit similar? (Pack whole tomatoes, stem area removed but otherewise intact, into roasting pan, and bake til shrunken by about 1/3 volume -- mmmm good!!!)

I ran mine thru my Foley food mill to remove the skins and seeds after roasting. A chinois would give very much the same effect. You get sort of a non homogeneous puree type thing, the solids stay separate from the liquids (you have to use trickery to avoid that happening to tomatoes no matter how you cook 'em, and I don't think the appropriate trickery is possible with roasting) but it is not chunky or anything like that. I am not sure whether you would consider this acceptible or not - it's not like a commercial puree but it's not chunky either.

Unfortunately if you want chunks of tomatoes you would have to cool and peel them by hand, and I guess squish the seeds out manually too unless you don't mind the seeds.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat, hoping to eat first ripe(ish) tomato of the year tonight, yippee!