If you’d like to learn how to can crushed tomatoes quickly and easily, this step by step tutorial is for you! Canning doesn’t have to take forever. Learn how to can crushed tomatoes in record time. No blanching or de-seeding required!
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In past years, I have had tomatoes coming out of my ears and have to find an easy way to can the bounty from my garden. I love canning crushed tomatoes primarily for Taco Soup, but these tomatoes are also a great base for all kinds of sauces. Taco Soup is one of my go-to recipes for busy fall nights. Canning crushed tomatoes can be such a pain in the butt, though.
How to Can Crushed Tomatoes Quickly!
When I first started canning tomatoes, it was a long and drawn out process. First, I washed all the tomatoes and cut off the blossom end and stem end. Then I blanched the tomatoes in boiling water and removed the skin. Then I removed the seeds (and half the tomato). Then I boiled what was left. And finally, I canned the crushed tomatoes in my water-bath canner. I thought I was supposed to do all of this because I was directed to in the Blue Book Guide to Conserving. Does the process sound familiar to you?
Since I’m short on time, I developed a new procedure for canning crushed tomatoes: a process that takes about half the time and is a heck of a lot easier. Here’s how you can cut your tomato processing time in half too!
Prepare Your Crushed Tomatoes
First, wash the tomatoes and cut off the bad spots.
Then, skip two of the most time consuming steps – blanching and removing seeds. Instead, just put the tomatoes in the food processor and puree them – skin, seeds, and all! It yields a lot more this way because half the tomato is not thrown out.
I have to tell you, I LOVE my mother’s Braun Food Processor! It’s awesome because there’s no hole in that pitcher. I also really like pureeing crushed tomatoes in my vitamix.
Next, bring the tomatoes to boil over medium-high heat. Then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes, or up to 2-3 hours depending on the time you have available. If you use the shorter time, keep the temperature higher and stir more often.
Prepare the Water Bath Canner
When your crushed tomatoes are about ready, prepare the water bath canner. You’ll also need to sterilize your clean jars by either boiling them in the canner for 10 minutes, or running them through a hot cycle in the dishwasher. I generally run my through the dishwasher so they’ll come out nice and hot about the time I need to fill them.
Prepare your canning lids by submersing them in steaming, but not boiling, water for a few minutes. I use both BPA free Tattler Reusable Canning Lids 
Fill up your jars- you want at least 1/4 in headroom left AFTER you add 2 TBS lemon juice concentrate (VERY IMPORTANT STEP!!) per jar, wipe the lid to remove any food — you want your jars to seal, after all. As you finish each jar, place it in the water bath canner to keep it hot. It is recommended that you completely finish one jar at a time for optimal results – not the batch method I display here… Do as I say, not as I do. 🙂
NOTE: Four tablespoons of a 5 percent acidity vinegar per quart may be used instead of lemon juice or citric acid. It’s possible the vinegar may cause undesirable flavor changes, but I’ve never personally noticed anything. I prefer to use vinegar instead of lemon juice.
Put your lids on and tighten rings securely.
Once your canner is full, make sure the water covers the tops of the jars, adding more water if necessary. Was the water has reached a rolling boil, start the timer for 45 minutes. Add 5 minutes per 1,000 feet to compensate for the altitude. I live at just under 1,000 feet. So if you live at 2,000 feet, process for 50 minutes instead. And so on. If you don’t know your altitude, just google it.
Carefully remove the jars and put them on a clean towel. Let them cool for a full 24 hours before you move them. Sit back and listen to the wonderful pings of the sealing jars! After 24 hours, make sure all of your jars have sealed. Wipe them down, remove the rings, and put them on a shelf to admire. If any jars didn’t seal, you can heat the sauce back up and try again.
In my experience, Romas, San Marzanos, and Amish paste tomatoes produce the best stewed tomatoes because they are less watery than other varieties.
The Lazy Person’s Guide to Canning Crushed Tomatoes
Ingredients
Instructions
Nutrition Information:
Serving Size:
1
Amount Per Serving:
Calories: 3675 Total Fat: 41g Saturated Fat: 5g Cholesterol: 1mg Sodium: 1085mg Carbohydrates: 794g Sugar: 535g Protein: 179g
If you liked this guide to canning crushed tomatoes quickly, you might like these posts too:
Grandma’s Secret Dill Pickle Recipe
Preserve your own flavored vinegars with herbs from your garden!
Strawberry Syrup Canning Guide
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Christy says
August 18, 2011 at 10:07 pmI just cut the end out and then cut them in half and put them in a huge pot and cook away. Slowly the skin comes off most of them and I just pick them out of the pot. I don’t get all crazy about this because after I add some spices and let it cook for about an hour and a half or so I use my immersion blender and mix it all up. The first time I made tomato sauce I squeezed out the seeds but I realized that was a huge waste! I love that you mix it up first.
Kathy T says
August 23, 2011 at 12:37 amI have been doing lots of crushed tomatoes and some sauce, both regular sauce and spaghetti sauce. I usually do salsa but I still have some left from last year so I haven’t gotten to it yet. Hopefully, I will get some done in the next few weeks because I have several recipes that call for some in it and I don’t really like to make fresh for the recipes.
The heat earlier in the summer, really did a number on my tomatoes, so after one round, I have had to buy them at the farmer’s market.
Brighid says
August 26, 2011 at 2:44 amMy kitchen would simply get too hot doing all that canning now so I freeze my tomato bounty.
Simple slow cooker sauce:
1 onion
2-3 garlic cloves
2 peel carrots
stem-end removed tomatoes cut in quarters to fill a large crockpot
olive oil poured over the veggies (.25 cup?)
Cook on low until your husband says “What is that wonderful smell?” (8 hours or so) and then remove the cover to cover for another hour or two. Cool, puree with an immersion blender and freeze.
Michelle says
August 26, 2011 at 12:12 pmYum! I have frozen sauce before too. I do that in smaller quantities – usually from sauce I make with my crushed tomatoes. Thanks for sharing your recipe. It looks great and the carrots add sweetness without sugar! 🙂
Lisa says
June 27, 2014 at 12:33 pmHow long will they keep in the freezer?
Nancy Roberts says
August 7, 2012 at 11:14 pmI have done the same too! I have a Vita Mix, so it really blends them up well. The last few years I haven’t been able to grow nearly as many tomatoes, so I have canned them whole, (skins off) so I can use them for whatever we need. They seem to taste fresher that way. I may just can some with the skins on and then puree them in my Vita Mix before cooking. That would be a time saver as well. Good post! It’s great to see so many people canning! 🙂
Barb @ A Life in Balance says
August 9, 2012 at 12:43 pmI don’t blanch my tomatoes either, though I do squeeze the seeds out. Usually, I collect them in gallon bags in the freezer and then can 5 gallon bags at a time.
Foy Update says
August 10, 2012 at 2:32 pmOkay if you are truly lazy you will buy a stick blender aka immersion blender and then you won’t even have to do batches in the food processor, you can just do it all in one pot! That’s what I do! However, then I add the step of running it through the food mill to get out any seeds and skin. Although now you are making me question whether I should bother doing that…
Foy
Michelle says
August 10, 2012 at 3:06 pmWell, I guess the truly lazy person will just buy Ragu… 😉 I don’t have an immersion blender but if I did, I would try it that way! I don’t mind the seeds and the skin gets shredded when I run my tomatoes in the food processor! So if the immersion blender does as good a job as the food processor, I probably wouldn’t run it through my food mill. Win-win!
miranda says
August 13, 2012 at 8:12 pmLooks great!
I like to take off the skins… though it does take time. Tomato skin holds elements that can aggravate arthritis…. plus they end up stuck in my teeth somehow, even after pureeing. 😉
To save even MORE time: buy an immersion blender! you wn’t have to dirty a separate device and you can combine the pureeing and boiling to the same step. Ah, look like Foy beat me to that recommendation. You can get an immersion blender pretty cheaply, and you’ll wonder how you ever lived and made soup, mashed potatoes or sauce without one!
Thanks for linking up to the hop!
Emily Bronte says
August 14, 2012 at 4:20 pmI do mine just like you only I use one of those high powered blender, similar to the Vitamix. It makes doing tomatoes a snap. Sometimes we puree a little celery also, add a dash of S&P, to make tomato juice and of course the lemon juice in the bottom of the jar to be sure it is acidic enough for the water bath canner. Don’t let the tomato puree and celery puree boil, just simmer until it cooks down a bit..about 20 minutes. Put in jars and proceed as you said.
Michelle says
August 14, 2012 at 5:32 pmInteresting! I put my lemon juice on the top. And I do boil my sauce. Seems to make it less watery. Not as big a deal when I’m working romas, but other tomatoes cause me problems sometimes. 🙂 Thanks for commenting!
Ally's Sweet & Savory Eats says
August 25, 2013 at 2:03 pmOkay – question!!! I’ve never canned. There I said it. But I do a LOT of freezing sauces and the like. Can I do this whole process, but at the end just freeze in jars or containers? I have a 5 gallon buckets of tomatoes sitting on the counter staring at me.
Michelle Marine says
August 26, 2013 at 6:26 amHi Ally, Yes! You can freeze them. If you do put them in glass jars though, leave a lot of head space – like 1-2 inches. Or the jar will bust. 😉 Good luck!
Ellie says
August 27, 2013 at 6:59 pmWhen I used to have too many tomatoes I would freeze them whole until I was ready to make sauce. Then run them under hot water and the skins popped off. Chop them up, usually in a food processed, and boil for 1-2 minutes. Let cool and the liquid separates from the pulp. Put in a muslin bag or jelly bag to drain and the almost clear watery liquid drains out leaving rather thick tomato sauce or paste which you can season and simmer for sauce or just can or freeze. It has a fresh tomato flavor without the long simmering. Use the liquid to adjust the thickness. If you rather not have the seeds use a food mill to avoid loosing the pulp. In this hot weather the less cooking heat in the house the better.
Nicolette says
July 28, 2014 at 1:17 pmIf you were to use citric acid and pint jars instead of the “2 TBS bottled lemon juice per quart” how much citric acid would you use? New to canning.
Michelle Marine says
July 30, 2014 at 12:59 amI don’t know, Nicolette, as I’ve never used citric acid. Sorry I’m no help!
Greg Mathers says
August 25, 2014 at 11:43 am1/2 tsp of citric acid or 2 Tbsp of lemon juice per quart.
Jayne says
August 31, 2014 at 3:58 pmThank You SO much! This worked so slick! I was canning the chopped tomatoes and they just had too much space in the jar once they cooled. I also LOVED skipping the skinning process! Thank You!
Michelle Marine says
September 1, 2014 at 7:59 amYou’re welcome! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. 🙂
Patti says
September 2, 2014 at 10:16 amLooks so good. I keep telling my husband that we should buy a bushel of tomatoes (not enough sun or land in my yard) at the farmers market and can some tomatoes or better yet can his spaghetti sauce which is soooo good. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.
Penny Miller says
September 29, 2014 at 9:49 amHi, I was happy to see that I’m not the only one that cans like that. You might like a recipe I posted on youtube…another tomato hack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kHFasUTUgk
Jeanette Cross says
September 21, 2015 at 3:00 pmIf one cooks the crushed tomatoes for two to three hours, why the need to process them for another 45 minutes? Couldn’t one process them for fifteen minutes or so for sealing the jars?
Jeanette Cross says
September 21, 2015 at 3:04 pmIf one cooks the crushed tomatoes for two to three hours in a pot, why the need to also process them for another 45 minutes? Couldn’t one process them for about fifteen minutes to seal the jars?
Michelle Marine says
September 21, 2015 at 6:31 pmHi Jeanette, You don’t have to cook them in the pot for that long if you don’t want to. I do, because it makes my sauce less watery. You do need to cook them that long in the water-bath canner because that’s what the experts recommend to kill botulism – and you don’t want botulism, for sure!!
Connie Adams Gross says
July 19, 2018 at 10:15 amI always use oven canning for tomatoes rather than water bath. Works perfectly!
45 min @250
Megan says
August 25, 2016 at 7:05 pmI do just about everything you said, only I cook my tomatoes in a large stock pot first , then fill up just a cheap $5 blender and blend them up real good, pour in jars (with a tsp of canning salt and a squirt of lemon juice on the bottom of the jar) then put my flats and rings on and normally if you work fast they seal themselves, if not I hot water bath for 10 min. Been making them this way for 8 years now 🙂
Jan says
September 1, 2018 at 9:55 pmMe too with my salsa for over 20 years, never a problem.
Lori says
September 21, 2017 at 11:51 amLast Summer I made salsa that was out of this world delish! I could have sworn the link to the recipe was on your page. Did you have a link for a Salsa recipe to can?
Michelle Marine says
September 21, 2017 at 3:53 pmHi Lori, I don’t have a canning safe salsa recipe, sadly. I need to get one though! Maybe you tried Jami from An Oregon Cottage’s recipe: http://anoregoncottage.com/my-favorite-salsa-for-canning/? Good luck!!
Neisha says
August 21, 2018 at 1:58 pmI just used regular tomatoes. Do you think after I blend these in the food processor that I could strain the juice out to reduce time cooking?
Michelle says
August 22, 2018 at 10:18 amYes, I think that would work just fine, Neisha! In fact, I’ve done it too. Good luck!