We found this recipe in the book with the most irrepressable title ever: Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning: Traditional Techniques Using Salt, Oil, Sugar, Alcohol, Vinegar, Drying, Cold Storage, and Lactic Fermentation. This is our first, experimental batch, with tomatoes from a roadside stand in Vermont where we just spent an amazing week.
Here’s what it says to do:
Make a brine (one-quarter cup salt to one quart of water), and bring it to a boil. Allow to cool. Choose firm tomatoes, preferably (‘Campbell’ variety, for example), wash and dry them carefully, and put them in glass jars. Pour in the cooled brine, up to one and a quarter inches below the rim, and fill in the remaining space with olive oil to cover. Close the jars airtight and store them in a cool place.
These tomatoes will keep for nine to ten months; use them for sauces.
So, if you don’t hear of any reported botulism cases in the greater Boston area between now and June, you’ll know that this is, indeed, a viable, inexpensive, quick, easy way to preserve tomatoes.
Well, I don’t think botulism would be the problem (though maybe some other form of food poisoning)… It seems to make sense that the olive oil would add an extra layer of protection prevent oxygen to come in contact with any sort of bacteria.