Learned the hard way at a family reunion in rural Ohio that canned tomatoes need acid added

Went to my cousin's place last summer for the big reunion. She used her grandma's recipe for spaghetti sauce just like always. Tasted fine but three people ended up sick that night. Turned out her soil had changed over the years or something because the tomatoes weren't acidic enough to keep bacteria down. Now I add a squirt of lemon juice to every batch of canned tomatoes I make, no exceptions. Anyone else run into this with homegrown produce?

2 comments

2 Comments

rowanw312d ago

Yeah people get comfortable with family recipes and forget that the stuff in the grocery store is standardized for a reason. A tomato ten years ago isn't the same as a tomato today even if it came from the same dirt. It's like how everyone assumes their grandma's canning methods are bulletproof but nobody accounts for changing soil conditions or weather patterns. I've seen the same thing happen with pickling recipes where the brine just doesn't hit the right pH anymore. Trusting your gut is fine but a little lemon juice is cheap insurance when you're feeding a crowd.

joel_mason221d ago

It's wild how much we just assume things stay the same over time, right? Like my mom always brags about her bread recipe but I swear wheat just doesn't behave the same way it did twenty years ago, you gotta adjust for the weather and the humidity in the air and all that. It's like we think the world is standing still but everything's always shifting under our feet whether we notice it or not.