preserving tomato passata

[KarenH]

I love making meganjanes tomato passata (from this forum) in summer when we have a glut of tomatoes, and usually I store it by freezing it.  But I was wondering about saving freezer space by preserving the passata in bottles.  Does anyone know if it is safe to store homemade passata on the shelf in bottles if it has been preserved in something like a Fowlers Vacola system? 

I have heard things about not being able to bottle tomato-based things due to their high acidity and a risk of botulism 

How do others store their tomato passata?

[snappy]

I understand you can bottle low acidity things if you use a pressure canner.  I'm not 100% sure but if you had a pressure cooker you might be able to use it.

The pressure canner gets the temp above 100C which kills the botulism.

[Emme]

I preserve tomatoes every year in the Fowlers outfit and have had no problems.  I skin the tomatoes and push them into the jars until there is only about 1/2 inch or whatever that is in cm left at the top.  All that is in the jars is tomatoes and juice.  I then add depending on the size of the jars citric acid.  Size 31 jar I put 1/2 teasp. full in the top and just stir it around with a knife. Then put the rings on and lid and preserve them as per the book and for my unit it takes around 1-1/2 hrs.  The tomatoes hold their colour and I have kept them for 2 years and they are still okay to use as long as they are sealed.  The only time I used tomatoes with other ingred. like onions garlic etc.  I found preserving them changed the colour and they did not look as nice.  Since then I only preserve the tomatoes by themselves and then add the other ingredients later when using in recipes etc.  Hope this may help.

Marie