Home-canned tomatoes: how to tame the acid?

I’ve been canning tomatoes over the last few years and really love it. For those that can, it’s really enjoyable to harness all of that bounty in the Summer and preserve it. Tomatoes are my favorite, as we eat so many over the year. However, I don’t have a pressure canner. Consequently, I have to add a bit of citric acid to…well…make sure I don’t give my family botulism. While they’re delicious, I sometimes find the acidity a bit too much. I add a pinch of sugar and that helps. However, are there any other tricks you recommend? I’ve thought about adding baking soda to counteract the acid. What tricks do you have?

Thanks!

I don’t know about a “trick” as such but when cooking with tomatoes I know to be acidic I will include a diced carrot in the recipe. I didn’t used to do this as I don’t like dishes that taste sweet, but the acid in some canned tomatoes is just so strong. A bonus is that if I’m blending the sauce the carrot adds some body in addition to counteracting the acid, but isn’t otherwise noticeable.

Sugar, whatever the source, is what tames the acid in tomatoes.

Ketchup works fine.

seems tomatoes are already sufficiently high in acid and sugar (also minimizes botulism) to prevent the already insanely low risk of food-borne botulism.

good primer: Everything You Need to Know About Botulism

Get a pressure cooker. I use mine for many things, including sushi rice.

I am a home gardener who has been canning tomatoes for a few years now. I do not care for the acidity of home canned tomatoes if you follow the vetted USDA canning instructions. It ruins them completely for me and I would rather use a jar of Italian passata from the grocery store.

Two years ago, I purchased a pressure canner thinking that it would be the ticket to not having to add acid to the tomatoes before processing, but I was mistaken. Unfortunately, even when using a pressure canner to process tomatoes, the USDA canning instructions still require acidification with the rationale given here:

https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/nchfp/factsheets/acidifying.html

I have done a bunch of reading on this and even considered purchasing a pH meter to measure the pH of my tomatoes that I grow. You can find many debates on various food forums about whether the acidification is truly necessary:

My personal choice has been to reduce the amount of acid I use before processing with a pressure canner.

This doesn’t really answer your question, but I did want to point out that pressure canning still requires acidification if you stick to the vetted instructions.

Yeah, I’ve heard that, but I’d prefer to not take the (low) risk.

Thanks for the replies, Everyone. I might try a pressure cooker and reduce the citric acid a bit as Ken states. Or…I might just give up.

As much as I love the idea of home canned tomatoes, we opt to buy Cento Organic San Marzano’s by the case from amazon as a recurring monthly shipment. We grow amish paste tomatoes for fresh salsa and sauces in the summer, but don’t can them for the exact reasons you are all outlining. To be “safe” you need to over acidify them. I actually did go the route of buying a pH meter (for hot sauce making) and to get a sufficiently low pH, we need to add sugar to counter balance the acid. The sugar then leaves an off sweet taste on the pallet. This unfortunately led us to abandon the idea of canning our own tomatoes for use throughout the year.

We do can jams, jellies, relish, pickles, pie fillings, and the like but leave tomato based canning to the industrial realm. There is nothing, absolutely nothing in life that is as good as freshly picked and jammed strawberries for the 3 weeks each summer they are in peak season.