Are my canned tomatoes ruined???

[n8young]

So I froze my tomatoes, defrosted, took the skins off, packed jars and ladeled water to appropriate height, added lemon juice and salt, and used a knife to get all air bubbles out. After the 45 min water bath I am left with a number of jars that are about 2/3 full of water......I'm not sure if there was just that much trapped air inside of the tomatoes, or if the water bath caused some of the water to boil out of the jars? Is this ok? I have tomatoes in jars that aren't fully covered with water....I'll try to get a picture up here later to help illustrate.

[Meatburner]

How did you prepare the tomatoes? Did you thaw them to room temperature or cook them at all?

[n8young]

cooked them in water for a roughly 5 min boil

[applestar]

Quick search on the 'net -- my ball book isn't handy -- cold pack recipe's of "whole" tomatoes either calls for peeling and chopping or coring and mushing into the jars, releasing juices (...and presumably emptying airspaces in seed cavities)

Also, one blog site said new USDA instructions calls for cold pack tomatoes to be processed for 85 min.

[n8young]

I think I hot packed though......boiled for 5 minutes in water.....that was what the ball book said to do anyway.....

[Ohio Tiller]

If the lids are sealed they are ok they are in a vacuum I have had it happen now and then and they were fine. Corn will do it every time if the temp gets to high in the pressure canner . You may have just got your water a bit to high and pushed the water out as steam!

[n8young]

These were only hot water bath canned, not pressure canned. That shouldn't matter I think though, as I prepared them according to the Ball Book for water bath canning......

[Ohio Tiller]

These were only hot water bath canned, not pressure canned. That shouldn't matter I think though, as I prepared them according to the Ball Book for water bath canning......

Yeah you should be ok I am guessing you just got them a bit to hot and it steamed off the water in the jars.

[Gary350]

Tomatoes are 1/3 air that is why I puree all my tomatoes and SKINS too in the kitchen blender before putting the juice into the jars. I never add Salt or extra acid either.