Tomato Juice

If you are growing tomatoes at your vegetable garden, you might be interested to preserve the fruits in different forms. Even if you are not growing tomatoes, you might have bought some tomatoes at the grocery nearby or departmental store and kept them to your kitchen. Some tomato fruits can be preserved in the form of tomato juice. The juice can be converted to tomato sauce, or tomato ketchup or tomato paste or tomato salsa.

For making tomato juice from tomato fruits, see the following procedure:

  1. Tomato fruits are made ready for juice extraction. If it is first time that you are working to prepare tomato juice, don’t take too much tomato fruits to make large quantity of the tomato juice.
  2. About 3 pounds of fresh tomatoes are separated.
  3. The tomato fruits are washed in clean water.
  4. The stems and sepals of the tomato fruits are removed from the tomato fruits for the juice preparation.
  5. Damaged or discolored or bruised tomato fruits are removed from the lot.
  6. First, about 1 pound of fresh tomato fruits is cut and put to a sauce pan quickly.
  7. The pan is heated for cooking the cut fruits on the pan.
  8. While cooking the tomato fruits, crush the tomato materials on the pan.
  9. Remaining tomato fruits are cut and put to the heating pan continuously and slowly.
  10. Continue crushing the pieces of the tomato on the pan.
  11. The tomato mixture is simmered for about five minutes after the last lot of the tomato pieces is added.
  12. The heated tomato mixture pressed through a sieve or food mill or cotton cloth to remove tomato skins and tomato seeds.
  13. For the media to keep the juice, lemon juice or citric acid is poured into the jars where you are going to can the tomato juice.
  14. The tomato juice is heated juice again for boiling.
  15. One tablespoon common salt is added to the juice made from of 3.5 pounds tomato fruits.
  16. Then the jars are filled with the boiled tomato juice keeping 1/2–inch head space in the can.
  17. The lids are adjusted on the can. Again the cans are heated for sterilization.  

Tomato juice in processing plants:

For the extraction of tomato juice from tomato fruits, tomato fruits are washed and then sorted. In developed countries the sorting of the tomato fruits are done electronically. Then the tomato fruits are chopped into pieces of size of about 0.5 inch and the pieces are treated in break procedures. There are two methods of break procedures: hot break and cold break procedures.

In the hot break procedure, the chopped tomato fruits are rapidly heated at 820C for about 15 seconds. The rapid heating inactivates the pectic enzymes of the tomato fruits. The hot break procedure produces high quality tomato juice with respect to its flavor and the taste appears like the taste of cooked tomato.

In cold break procedure, before the tomato fruits are chopped, they are scalded to loosen the skin of the fruits. Then the tomato fruits are chopped or crushed at temperature lower than 660C. The chopped or crushed bulk is passed to the holding tank. The crushed tomato fruit is kept static in the holding tank for the duration from some seconds to few minutes.

During the period the action of pectic enzymes of the crushed tomato fruits, the action catalyzes degradation of pectins. The tomato juice extracting processing plant owner boast the quality of the tomato juice extracted from cold break procedure since it produce better color, better flavor and reservoir of natural vitamin C. The tomato juice extraction and filling into can are done quickly using the cold break procedure.

Thereafter the chopped material is passed to a cyclone for tomato juice extraction. The tomato juice extractor extracts about 80% juice from the chopped tomato. The air is removed from the tomato juice in order to prevent the loss of vitamin C.

In the tomato juice, some juice extracting industries mix salt in addition to citric acid and flavoring substance. The tomato juice is filled into can or bottles. Filling of the tomato juice is done efficiently in order to minimize the vacuum space in the can and or bottles. The cans are sealed at about 850C and then the tomato juice can is immediately water cooled.

Before the filling, the tomato juice is presterilized at 1210C for about ten seconds and the hot juice is filled into the cans. The minimum can sealing temperature is 930C for 3 minutes.  

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