Here’s the number you need to tattoo on your brain: 1 teaspoon of canning salt per quart jar. That’s it. For a pint jar? Use ½ teaspoon. Don’t overthink it—this isn’t rocket science, it’s just preserving summer in glass. If you use too much, your tomatoes will taste like the Dead Sea. Too little, and you’re basically giving microbes a free pass to ruin your hard work.
Now, I see you reaching for that fancy pink Himalayan salt. Stop. Put it down. Slowly back away. Canning salt is pure sodium chloride—no iodine, no anti-caking agents, no magic crystals from a mountain. Iodized salt can make your tomatoes turn a weird, unappetizing gray color. You want your tomatoes to look like they did when you picked them, not like a zombie’s lunch.
But Wait, There’s More (Because of Course There Is)
What if you’re allergic to salt? Or what if you’re just feeling rebellious? Well, you can leave it out completely—but you’ll need to pressure can instead of water bath canning. Water bath canning without salt is like jumping out of a plane without a parachute: you might survive, but the odds are lousy. Pressure canning raises the temperature high enough to kill bacteria even without salt, but it’s more work. Ask yourself: do you really want to mess with a pressure cooker while also trying to chop basil?
Here’s a surprising fact I love to drop at parties: the salt doesn’t even penetrate the tomatoes. It mostly sits in the liquid, doing its antimicrobial dance. So if you’re worried about your tomatoes being too salty, just rinse them after opening. Problem solved! Your great-grandma didn’t have time for this drama, and neither should you.
Canned Tomatoes
