Homemade Tomato Juice � How to Do It Right

The biggest problem I have run into in making and bottling my own tomato juice is how to get the juice to not separate in the bottles. If you have ever bottled tomato juice or other puree juices, you will know what I am talking about. The thick part of the juice seems to separate from the watery part. So, how do you keep it from doing that? It can seem to be a little tricky, but it is possible. First, I want to talk a little bit about tomatoes.

* Use vinegar which has been used to keep a supply of bird's-eye peppers.There are many lid designs that can be used with your quart jars. We recommend drilling four �� holes as you normally would in half-pint jar lids. Then drill one larger hole in the center. This will be filled with a High Temp Gasket sealer to create a self-healing injection site. If you are using the quart jars for grain to grain transfers you can leave out the injection site.Load your pressure cooker with the jars and fill the it up to the desired water level. Now, take your jars back out and preheat your pressure cooker water to boiling. This will help prohibit more grains from exploding during the heating process. After the water has started to boil, load the pressure cooker again and place the lid on. After the pressure cooker starts to sizzle at 15 p.s.i., set your timer for 90 minutes.Depending on the size of your pressure cooker you will want to adjust the amount of ingredients to suit how many quart size jars you will be able to sterilize at one time. For each quart jar measure out 200g or 250 ml of organically grown rye. You can use the quart jars for measuring. Simply pour the rye into each jar to the 250 ml level. We will need to set a pot large enough to hold enough water to cover all of the rye grains put together.When a Quart Rye Jar is fully colonized it can be used to inoculate up to 10 more jars to expand your mycelium and increase substrate mass thus increasing yields. Inoculating a grain jar with colonized substrate is faster than using a Liquid Culture because there is more mycelium to reproduce and proliferate. The procedure is fairly simple. The main concern is sterility when opening the uncolonized substrate jars.

Homemade tomato juice is one of my favorites. If you garden, you will want to know how to preserve those extra tomatoes for use during the cold or hot season when you can�t grow the fresh ones. Tomatoes are one of the few foods that have healthy nutrients in them that are better for you when cooked. Enjoy your glass of tomato juice or tomato soup knowing you are getting good nutrition.

Author: Lee Ann Orton