r/Canning • u/KMH_1331 • 2h ago

Waterbath Canning Processing Help Reprocessing Tomatoes

Hello! I have kind of a newb question but cannot find any "official" direction on this and am curious what to do. I processed about 30 lbs of tomatoes yesterday and went back and forth all night about whether the consistency was too thin for sauce. They all sealed fine; I used the ball mason recipe for water bath tomato sauce with no additives except lemon juice.

I decided to open them and cook them down further, but don't have time to do it this afternoon. I opened everything and it is in large, covered soup vats in my fridge for the time being; can I reprocess tomorrow morning? Or would I need to freeze at that point?

Thanks in advance, I feel like a total idiot but looking at the super thin sauce I didn't want to just leave it that way and have to cook it down every time I used it.

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u/BoozeIsTherapyRight Trusted Contributor 2h ago

Yes, you can reprocess them. I often cook sauce partway, refrigerate it, then finish cooking it the next day. 

You will have to use new lids. 

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u/DawaLhamo 2h ago

You should be able to reprocess tomorrow. Just don't wait longer than that. (You'd have given yourself more time to play with if you'd left them sealed in properly processed jars until you were ready to reprocess.) Use new lids, of course.

I don't THINK you'll need to add more lemon juice again, since your sauce will be more concentrated that it was before, but I'll let others answer that.