[ContainerTed]

I think I'd be drinking that 48 quarts of puree. One choice that I don't think I saw above would be to open the jars and then pressure can them. If I were to decide to do that, I would add the recommended (although optional) 1 teaspoon of salt to each quart.

For the obvious safety reasons, we started canning only the tomato "juice" a few years ago. We do a reduction of about 30%-40% which gives us very thick puree. I've always added the one teaspoon of canning salt per quart when it goes into the jars. Several hundreds of quarts were done with a Boiling Water Bath Canner over the years and no problems or spoilage has ever been encountered. But, now we have a Presto 16 Quart Pressure Canner and everything goes through it. I downloaded all the "books"/Chapters from the website mentioned above and keep them handy all the time. We also have the book that comes with the Pressure canner and two other older books that we found at local book stores. The recommended procedures haven't changed much over the last few decades.

Ever since we got the pressure canner, our BWB canner is only used to sterilize the jars and lids. Besides tomato juice for drinking, we use the very thick puree for various soups, sauces, and salsas - adding the other ingredients to each dish as we prepare them. I freeze peppers, onions, tomatillos, cillantro and some other ingredients that we harvest from the garden. It really tastes good in snowy January.

So, I'm curious about how many others also put canning salt into their "juice/puree"?????