Tuesday, September 14, 2010

A Tomatoey Challenge

Things are crazy here at the moment, so this will be a quick one. The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation.
I do try to do some canning every fall, so this challenge fit perfectly into my plans.  Apples are not quite ready here yet.....but I did end up with a large amount of green tomatoes......so I tried a recipe for Green Tomato Mincemeat.  Mincemeat is something I have never made before and only tasted a few times in my life.  I was very pleasantly surprised with this recipe though and will be making it again next year when I find I have an abundance of green tomatoes.  A friend of mine happily inherited a liter of mincemeat and has already baked up some mincemeat tarts.  They were delicious, and I cannot wait for Christmas to get here so I can try to make some this year for the first time:)  I will have to make some as having made 1/2 of the recipe below......it still made 15 pints of mincemeat.......YUM!  If you've got a whole lot of green tomatoes laying around, and you like mincemeat......give this recipe a try.....I highly recommend it!   After all those green tomatoes were used up I still had plenty of red ones.....so then we tried a salsa recipe which I did not like too much so no point in sharing that one!
Green Tomato Mincemeat
(adapted from Allrecipes)
8 quarts of mince green tomatoes
8 quarts of minced cored and peeled apples
1/2 pound of suet
6 lbs brown sugar
1 cup cider vinegar
2 tbsp salt
2 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp cloves
2 tbsp allspice
2 lbs raisins and currants combined
32 oz mixed citrus peel
7 oranges, peeled, sectioned and chopped
2 lemons, peeled and finely chopped

Combine all in a large pot and heat over low heat for 3 hours.  Sterilize jars (30 pints) and process with boiling water bath for 25 minutes with 1/2 inch head space.

3 comments:

Mary Bergfeld said...

This is really funny ;_). I never dreamed someone else would make this as well. We need a math major to calculate the odds for us. Cookies, cake and even ice cream will help work down your stash. I'm doing a tart tomorrow but have no plans after that. Havea great evening. Blessings...Mary

Anonymous said...

mmm Green tomato mince meat, what a great idea. Imagine all the yummy sandwiches you can have with that.... lamb n co

LittleRed said...

Thaanks! I am looking forward to some mincemeat tarts and some other baking....soon I hope:)