Annabels Harvest sauce.had a major disaster

holly-rocks, Nov 11, 12:08am
From her Free range cookbook. Last year I made quite alot of this and most of it was a disaster. Her recipe says it can be stored in the pantry for months even though it doesn't have much sugar or any vinegar added. Its super super yummy but when opening the stored bottles the sauce literally exploded like a volcano and squirted out everywhere! Harvest sauce of doom methinks! ha.Arrgh and I gave abit away as Xmas pressies too. Opps. Is it just me or has any of you lovelys also had a bit of a disaster with this sauce. Tomatoes are getting cheaper and I have the preserving bug again. Thanks : )

fifie, Nov 11, 3:01am
Mmm not sure what happened there, oh dear can just picture the mess lol,should have been fine. Made a heap of this to last summer, and froze it all was fine its a nice flavoured sauce. Contact her and ask why this happened, she is lovely and hopefully can give you a answer,there is a contact link on her website.

kinna54, Nov 11, 3:34am
I have had trouble with a couple of her recipes as well. Also with nigella's.
I have a nice one that came off here, maybe pickles or Elliehen posted it. I had it on computer but we lost a lot of files when the hard drive crashed recently. try search as it was a really nice one, an older style recipe., quite spicy! I didn't make a lot and ours is nearly all gone.

pickles7, Nov 11, 3:35am
Were the jars sealed ! .Did you use acid free tomatoes! You mention bottles.that could be your problem.

pickles7, Nov 11, 3:46am
I don't really make sauces orpickles, without a lot of vinegar. I often use up pickles in stir fry meals just the same.
The other day I put pickles on top of a pizza. It was nice. Sweet and sour pizza. It was hard to find the pickle after it was cooked. My husband is not keen on the pickle, as pickle. A good way to use it up, after all it is full of spice, onion, chili, cucumber. I sliced the cucumber didn't dice it, lol. poor him.

holly-rocks, Nov 16, 1:48am
Hi everyone :) Thanks for your reply's. Opps Pickles i meant jars not bottles ( and yip they were sealed) . It was made from normal supermarket tomatoes and tomatoes from our glasshouse, dont think they were acid free. Im about to whip up another batch now.its probably just something i did and i hope i have not put off anyone from trying this recipe as its seriously good!and Annable rocks ! Im planning on getting her new book from my Mothers birthday.Thanks guys :)

pickles7, Nov 16, 2:32am
http://www.annabel-langbein.com/cooking/recipes/recipe/!id=292
I personally would add a Tbsp of lemon juice to each quart jar, use sea salt, and process the jars in a water bath.

holly-rocks, Nov 16, 5:35am
Hey thanks for the tips! I will try that next time :)

greg.n.michelle, Nov 16, 6:14am
I used that recipe and made gallons of the stuff and froze the lot and defrosted as needed we had harvest sauce until the beginning of this monht.sadly missed but looking forward to a new harvest.

punkinthefirst, Nov 21, 8:34am
There isn't enough vinegar in the recipe to preserve the tomatoes as the old-fashioned table sauce does. So bottle it as you would any straight tomato puree, i.e.,put proper seals on the jars and process in a water bath. Or freeze.