Fairy tales can come true

Or: My new badass food strainer which will revolutionize home preservation endeavors as I know them

Because I’ve got a few posts coming up on canning, I wanted to take a minute to show you my new toy. It’s the Roma Food/Veg Strainer. I bought it for two reasons:

• It will enable me to process tomatoes much more quickly. For tomatoes, you wash and quarter, then run through the mill. Pulp comes out one opening and seeds/peels/cores come out another. Then the puree can be frozen or canned, or turned into other things like salsa or pasta sauce. This is much easier than the usual method, which involves blanching the tomatoes, peeling them, coring them, and placing them whole into canning jars.

• With the optional attachment box, I will be able to make short work of our grapes later in the month. Again, I’ll just wash them and run them through. What’s left will be juice suitable for canning or making jelly. In previous years I’ve had to wash and simmer the grapes, then run through a cheesecloth, squeezing the hot pulp to get the juice out. (I know what you’re thinking, and you should be ashamed of yourself.) While that way works really well and isn’t horrible, it’s very messy and takes a while.

In addition to these main reasons, it can also be used on other fruits and vegetables. (Applesauce can be managed much like tomato puree, but the apples need to be cooked before straining.) I’ve had a chance to play around a little, and it seems like this little guy is going to be very useful. I used to have a different  style of food mill, but it broke after just one season, and it had to be repeatedly cleaned/unclogged during use.  So far, the Roma feels much sturdier, and the waste leaves the gadget through an opening instead of hanging around and causing me aggravation.

If it’s something you’re interested in, you may want to look around, as prices vary. Sometimes you can find one at a thrift store, which would be great. For me the best deal was at Amazon because I definitely wanted that attachment set, and they had a package discount that I took advantage of. However, you can also find it at Lehman’s and possibly at local kitchen specialty stores.

I suppose I’ll have to still do some tomatoes the old-fashioned way just to keep my word to my practically-in-double-digits readership, but I’m not going to lie — there might be a hissy fit. I’ve seen the more convenient way, and it will be hard to go back.

Note to readers: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

Tags: applesauce, canning, food mill, food strainer, grape juice, puree, roma, tomato