There is a trick to home canning green tomatoes, that I found by accident, if you want to fry green tomatoes this winter and not have them a falling apart soggy mess! It is the season (early fall) to grab those green tomatoes off the vine and put them up for a winter and spring treat. The trick is not to slice them like most recipes call for. You have to cut them in asymmetrical chunks. If you slice them… the the centers don’t have enough pith to hold together during the frying process. So cut them Willy-Nilly into irregular large chunks. Just let your knife go where it wants to go.
Make sure to cut the core out the top and cut out any bad spots or bug bites you may spot as you are cutting them! But this is what they should look like when you cold pack them in the jars. you should also be using firm green tomatoes. Not squishy ones.
To cold pack them: place your tomatoes in the jar and add a tablespoon of lemon juice. Then cover them with hot boiling water. Place a lid on the jar and water bath the quarts for 45 minutes. Done! So easy! So yummy! With the acidity of the tomatoes and the added acidity of the lemon juice water bathing them is fine. No need to pressure cook these (pressure cooking would make them too soft and they would fall apart anyway).
Now what do you do with them? When you are ready to use them… there is another trick. Dump the tomatoes out (it’s easier if you have used wide mouth jars BTW) into a sieve or a colander and let them drain for 5-10 minutes. DO NOT SKIP THE DRAINING PART! If you do…. you will have a soggy squishy mess in your fry pan.
Coat your tomatoes with flour (some people use corn meal or a mixture of the two but we like flour). We also add a bit of salt and pepper to our flour before dredging the tomatoes in the flour mix. You can use whatever spices you like best.
We like to fry them in crisco. Honestly it’s the only thing we ever cook using crisco as we usually use olive oil or bacon grease etc… but they turn out so nice and crispy and pretty with crisco that we do keep a small tub just for frying tomatoes. Obviously fry till golden brown. Don’t turn them too often… just turn them when the bottom gets crispy and you want to do the top part next. Moving them too much will cause the coating to fall off and the tomato to get mushy.
I would imagine (but not confirmed) that this is Keto friendly as you are using a very small portion of flour for coating them and since it is a side dish then it is probably not a lot of carbs? But again I haven’t really researched it yet because we love this treat so much it’s just one of those things I’m not willing to give up for my Keto diet lol. An occasional splurge should not hurt in moderation anyway lol… so I will let you do that research on your own. I sorta don’t want to know the answer to be honest lol (deny deny deny!) … that’s how much we love this treat!
Another trick we have learned… is recycling an old turkey fryer to water bath can outside. It helps keep the house much cooler and is way easier to do it this way!
So don’t let those green tomatoes go to waste and gather them up before the first frost… and get to canning them for a vitamin packed (in my opinion) winter treat!
Conestoga Chuck 