When Good Tomatoes Turn Bad

We are still making our way through our stash of canned edibles from the garden. Much of my canning this year was done with vegetables I purchased from local farmers. My small garden had let me down again, or was it I who let it down. In any case, som valuable lessons were learned this year so not all as lost.

I made vegetarian chili yesterday. It's a very easy recipe that involves two 500 ml cans of tomatoes, my 100 mile tomatoes. Since I make my chili in the crock pot I assemble all the ingredients and just throw it in as I chop or open cans. That's when I noticed one of my cans of tomatoes did not look right. There was not enough liquid surrounding the diced tomatoes and the colour was slightly off. The tomatoes were still red, but just a tad more brown then the jar beside it.

Tomatoes were an experiment this year. I had never canned them before, so I needed to be on the safe side. I brought out another jar of tomatoes and used them, leaving the "off" one on the counter. Today I decided it would be better to dispose of it before I inadvertantly used it on something.

Well, there was no use in worryying about me using it. As soon as I opened the lid I could smell how bad they had turned. The actual tomatoes looked okay, just the slight colour difference. I am sure now that even if I had not noticed the colour I would not have missed to odour. I suppor nature is good at letting us know when something is not safe to eat.

This experience has reinforced a few things for me as far as canning goes. You can do everything by the book and still suffer a bad jar. Tomatoes are tricky so pay careful attention to times, head space and acid content. Always look carefully at your jars even after ensuring the lid is sealed. Any off colours or major air pockets can indicate a good jar gone bad.

I am not sure what happened to make that single jar go bad. I have had over 12 jars of perfectly scrumptious tomatoes in former chili batches and so this single one was an anomoly. Even still careful attention to detail is certainly not lost when it coms to canning.