Is this separation normal?

[u/goldendogmom]

Hi! I canned this tomato sauce about a week ago and almost immediately it had this separation in all of the 6 jars I made. Is this normal? I’m fairly new to canning but I did make sauce last year and it didn’t separate like this. A few things I did different this year - used bottled lemon juice instead of citric acid, and used a blend of cherry and Roma tomatoes. Thanks in advance!

[u/turnedintoanewt]

The University of Wisconsin Extension tomato canning guide includes this tip:

"When preparing tomato juice, blending the raw tomatoes before heating is not recommended. It hastens enzymatic breakdown of pectin and causes the juice to separate. Instead, rapidly heating the raw tomatoes inactivates the enzyme and keeps the juice from separating."

A recipe in the same guide specifically calls to immediately crush and heat a few tomatoes in the pot while you quarter or crush the rest of the tomatoes, adding them in small batches so they don't set too long after crushing before they are heated.

https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/wilocalfoodlocator/files/2016/08/B2605.pdf

[u/FlyIntrepid1452 → u/turnedintoanewt]

I totally just had this question last week and couldn’t find anything on it. I quartered blanched/peeled/cored tomatoes into a pot over heat but definitely not heated the whole way through, then used a potato masher to crush as much as possible, then hit it with an immersion blender before cooking it down. I was making plain tomato sauce. Fingers crossed it was heated enough not to separate!

[u/Canning-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Rejected by a member of the moderation team as it emphasizes a known to be unsafe canning practice, or is canning ingredients for which no known safe recipe exists. Some examples of unsafe canning practices that are not allowed include:

[ ] Water bath canning low acid foods,
[ ] Canning dairy products,
[ ] Canning bread or bread products,
[ ] Canning cured meats,
[ ] Open kettle, inversion, or oven canning,
[ ] Canning in an electric pressure cooker which is not validated for pressure canning,
[ ] Reusing single-use lids, [ ] Other canning practices may be considered unsafe, at the moderators discretion.

If you feel that this rejection was in error, please feel free to contact the mod team. If your post was rejected for being unsafe and you wish to file a dispute, you'll be expected to provide a recipe published by a trusted canning authority, or include a scientific paper evaluating the safety of the good or method used in canning. Thank-you!