Pickled tomatoes in winter are food of the gods. There are those who love preparations from cucumbers, but I, to be honest, are net tomatoes, which I prefer more, but... When there is an assortment on the plate, I drag the tomatoes out first.
I rarely do canning myself, in this case my wife is more at home (and my relatives usually supply banks), but ...
I constantly collect the most "cunning" life hacks - what if they come in handy? In this you can compare me with Plyushkin.
Usually, how the collection takes place: they are treated with something amazingly tasty - and you have to find out how this deliciousness is made? Or he himself finds a desire to create something winter-useful, and as a result, “it’s completely wrong,” so you have to find out where you screwed up ...
I remember my first experiment with rolling tomatoes ended very badly. The tomatoes were supposed to be strong, but as a result, they all cracked, and did not look ice at all. And the brine became cloudy.
I parsed the errors. It turned out that:
Tomatoes cannot be sterilized for a long time
Fearing that the cans would "explode", I started decontaminating them with all their contents from the bottom of my heart. I'm surprised how they didn't burst during that process, and the tomatoes didn't turn into mashed potatoes.
To preserve the tomato, it is necessary to sterilize the tanks in advance, and then do not put them with the contents in boiling water. It is enough to pour boiling marinade a couple of times, or the first time with boiling water, the second time with marinade.
The brine must be filtered
Rock salt, which is best used for blanks, is not always perfectly clean. Very often, after dissolving, strange crystals and even sand and tiny stones remain at the bottom of the dishes. So the brine must be drained.
Whole garlic cloves
Don't ask why. The fact that chopped garlic makes the brine cloudy was argued by one very experienced granny in conservation. Her tomatoes turned out to be such that it was impossible to tear yourself away from the can. As soon as she did not do them!
At the same time, the brine was always transparent, without any hint of turbidity. She argued - because the garlic lays whole teeth.
I tried to check this statement, and so - yes, if the garlic is chopped, cloudy brine is more common. I couldn’t explain the physics and chemistry of the process, and I’m not at all sure that it depends on the garlic (and not on the technology), but... I took a note and I don’t cut the garlic. Why cut it?
Chop tomatoes
With a needle, a toothpick, a stick - whatever you want. Then they will remain intact (the skin will not burst), and they themselves will be prettier, and the pickle is more transparent, and the tomatoes are a little richer in the taste of the marinade.
Only you need to prick not the barrel, but the junction with the stalk.
Scald everything
Perhaps no one except me made such a mistake, but... In general, when the lids of my next experiment of pickled tomatoes "swelled", they pointed out to me that there are a lot of greens in the jars. They say that it is because of her that the seams can swell and even explode.
I turned to the author of the recipe with this question - like, how so?
To which he received a simple answer: the greens must be scalded. When cucumbers or zucchini are pickled, jars are most often sterilized in a boiling ode already filled. And this cannot be done with tomatoes as we remember. A lot of greens are added at the very end - when the tomatoes have already been poured with boiling water, and when the marinade is boiling in them.
And bacteria are introduced into the greenery. Therefore, cans explode and lids swell because of greenery, but because of inattention. If you put greens on top of tomatoes, under the lid, be sure to pour boiling water over it (or you can even hold it in it a little).