20+ Green Tomato Canning Recipes

Green tomato canning recipes are how you rescue the tail end of the tomato patch when a frost rolls in before the last of the crop has a chance to ripen. Those firm, unripe tomatoes that would otherwise hit the compost heap turn into pickles, relishes, chutneys, and even pie filling, an old-fashioned pantry of treats that lasts right through to next summer.

Waste not, want not. That was the motto of homesteaders and pioneers back in the day, when every last bit of the harvest mattered. When an early frost threatened, they were out there in the cold pulling the season’s green tomatoes off the vines before they were ruined. Some will ripen up on the counter, sure, but if you have a real garden, plenty will spoil long before they ever turn red.

You can cook green tomatoes fresh in all sorts of green tomato recipes, fried green tomatoes chief among them. The trouble is, you can only eat so many before you run out of appetite, and that’s the point where preservation comes in. The recipes here are grouped by type, from plain canned slices and pickles through relishes, chutney, salsa, and the sweet preserves at the end.

Green tomatoes are more acidic than ripe ones, and firmer too, which makes them well suited to water bath canning. But more acidic doesn’t mean acid-free. Tested recipes still call for a measured amount of bottled lemon juice or vinegar, and when you start adding low-acid ingredients like onions and peppers, you either pressure can the recipe or rely on the acid in a tested recipe to keep it safe.

One thing worth knowing before you start: tomatoes harvested green and ripened on the counter do not reliably develop the acidity needed for canning, according to the Wisconsin State Extension. If you’re picking them green, use them up green in these recipes rather than ripening them for your usual red tomato canning recipes like sauce or whole tomatoes.

Acidifying Green Tomatoes for Canning

Green tomatoes are more acidic than ripe ones, but acidity still varies from tomato to tomato, and a tested recipe never relies on that natural acid alone. The acid you add yourself is what guarantees a safe finished jar, and the form it takes just depends on what you’re making. It’s the one detail in green tomato canning that isn’t up for adjustment.

For plain canned green tomatoes, that added acid is bottled lemon juice measured into each jar. For pickles, relishes, chow chows, and chutneys, the vinegar in the brine does the same job. Either way, the amount called for in a tested recipe is the floor and not a suggestion, and cutting it back is what turns a safe batch into a risky one.

Two things matter alongside the acid itself. Use bottled lemon juice rather than fresh squeezed, because bottled is standardized to a reliable acidity while fresh swings from lemon to lemon. And resist adding extra low-acid vegetables like onions or peppers to a plain pack or a tested recipe, since that shifts the acid balance the recipe was tested at. I’ve written up which safe canning recipe changes work and which don’t.

Canning Plain Green Tomatoes

The simplest thing you can do with a counter full of green tomatoes is can them plain, sliced and packed into jars in water. Because they’re unripe, they hold their shape through the canning process far better than soft, ripe tomatoes do, so you end up with slices that are still firm enough to bread and fry months later.

They go into the water bath canner the same way ripe tomatoes do, with a measured dose of bottled lemon juice added to each jar to guarantee safe acidity. Green tomatoes start out more acidic than ripe ones, but the added lemon juice is what makes plain canning reliably safe, so it isn’t a step to skip.

Put up this way, a few quarts of green tomato slices become the start of fried green tomatoes, a breakfast hash, or a green tomato gratin any night of the year.

• Canning Green Tomato Slices Firm slices packed with a measured amount of bottled lemon juice, ready to pull out and fry up all winter.

Pickled Green Tomatoes

You can pickle almost anything, and green tomatoes are no exception. They stand in for cucumbers in just about any cucumber pickling recipe, and because they’re firm to begin with, they keep a satisfying snap after processing instead of going limp in the jar.

The acidity in any of these comes from vinegar, so the vinegar ratio in a tested recipe is what keeps them safe. Beyond the standard dill and sweet versions, there’s a spicy one with hot peppers in the jar.

Classic Green Tomato Pickles

These are the tested green tomato pickles we make and can here, covering the dill, sweet, and spicy ends of the spectrum.

• Pickled Green Tomatoes A simple brine that turns a bowl of unripe tomatoes into crisp, tangy pickles.
• Dill Pickled Green Tomatoes Garlic and dill carry these the same way they do a classic dill cucumber pickle.
• Sweet Pickled Green Tomatoes A spiced, sweet brine closer to the dessert end of the pickle shelf.
• Spicy Pickled Green Tomatoes Hot peppers go into the jar for a pickle with real backbone.

Green Tomato Relish and Chow Chow

Plain pickles are tasty, but people don’t eat their way through a crock of them the way they did back when pickles were needed to liven up an otherwise dull winter diet. It’s a good deal easier to get a spoonful of relish onto a plate, which is part of why green tomato relishes have such staying power.

Relishes made with green tomatoes often go by the names chow chow or piccalilli, and they range from nearly all green tomato to a mix loaded with other end-of-season vegetables. A relish isn’t all that different from a pickle in what goes in the jar. The main change is texture, since a relish is chopped fine and spoonable rather than packed in big chunks.

Chow Chow and Piccalilli

These are our tested chow chow and piccalilli recipes, each one a regional take on the same idea of preserving the last of the garden in a sharp, chopped relish.

• New England Style Green Tomato Piccalilli A mustard-forward chopped relish in the New England tradition, sharp with a touch of sweet.
• Southern Style Chow Chow Relish A cabbage and green tomato relish built for topping a bowl of beans and greens.
• Amish Chow Chow A loaded mixed-vegetable version with cauliflower, carrots, and green beans alongside the green tomatoes.
• Canadian Style Green Tomato Chow Chow Heavy on the green tomatoes and gently spiced, the way it’s done up north.

More Green Tomato Relishes

Outside the chow chow family, there are plenty more green tomato relishes worth canning. I make three of my own. The classic is sweet, with mustard seed and celery seed. The hot dog relish is spiced, with brown sugar, cinnamon, and clove. The dilled relish is sour and salty, a lot like dill pickle relish. All three are in my list of green tomato pickling recipes, along with the pickles and chow chows.

• Classic Green Tomato Relish
• Green Tomato Hot Dog Relish
• Dilled Green Tomato Relish

There are more green tomato relishes from other cooks too, including a couple of tested kitchen-sink relishes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

• Fall Garden Relish An NCHFP-tested relish that sweeps up the last of the garden, cabbage and peppers and green tomatoes together.
• Rummage Relish (Kitchen Sink Relish) Another tested catch-all relish from NCHFP for whatever the season leaves you holding.
• Green Tomato Relish A sweet, finely chopped relish that tends to disappear fast on hot dogs.
• Pickled Green Tomato Relish A tangy small-batch relish for when you only have a few tomatoes to use up.
• Spicy Green Tomato Relish A relish with some heat worked in for anyone who likes a kick on the side.

Green Tomato Chutney

A chutney is a close cousin to a relish, but it tends to be cooked down longer and seasoned heavily with warm Indian spices for a thicker, more savory result. Where a relish lives on burgers and hot dogs, a chutney finds a place alongside cheese, curry, and all manner of roasted meats.

Green tomatoes take beautifully to this treatment, holding their shape while the spices and a little sugar and vinegar cook down around them. Apples turn up in a lot of green tomato chutneys, adding body and a mellow sweetness that balances the tomatoes’ tang.

• Green Tomato Chutney Warm spices simmered with green tomatoes into a thick, savory chutney for cheese boards and curries.
• Green Tomato Apple Chutney David Lebovitz’s classic pairing of tart green tomatoes and apples.
• Green Tomato, Apple and Pepper Chutney A British-style chutney with apples and peppers worked in for extra depth.

Green Tomato Salsa, Sauces, and Condiments

Green tomatoes shine in the savory cooked condiments too, the salsas and ketchups and simmer sauces that earn a permanent spot in the fridge door. Their firmness is an asset here, since they stand up to processing far better than ripe tomatoes and leave you with a finished sauce that has real texture instead of going to mush.

We make a lot of enchiladas at our house, usually with tomatillo sauce and tomatillo salsa, but green tomatoes do the same job and are a lot easier to grow in a northern garden. As with the relishes, the safe acidity in any of these comes from the vinegar or lemon juice in a tested recipe, so stick to tested ratios.

Green Tomato Salsa Verde

Swap green tomatoes in for the tomatillos and you get a tangy verde salsa with a flavor all its own, and a better texture in the jar to boot.

• Green Tomato Salsa Verde Green tomatoes standing in for tomatillos in a tangy verde salsa that holds its texture through canning.

Ketchup and Cooking Sauces

Green tomato ketchup is a proper old-fashioned condiment, sharper and tangier than the red kind, and an enchilada sauce made with green tomatoes is a fine way to put up a big batch at once.

• Green Tomato Ketchup An old-fashioned ketchup with a sharper, tangier edge than the red kind.
• Green Tomato Enchilada Sauce

Substituting Green Tomatoes for Tomatillos

Green tomatoes and tomatillos are close enough in the canner that tested sources treat them as interchangeable in salsa. Both run high in acid, with tomatillos sitting around a pH of 3.8 and green tomatoes coming in more acidic than ripe tomatoes, and that acidity is exactly the property a tested salsa recipe counts on to stay safe. If you’ve grown green tomatoes but can’t find tomatillos, that’s good news, since one stands in for the other without any loss of safety.

The National Center for Home Food Preservation, drawing on the Washington State University salsa research, allows you to substitute green tomatoes or tomatillos for tomatoes in any of its tested salsa recipes, and the University of Wisconsin Extension says the same for swapping green tomatoes in for tomatillos in an approved recipe. The catch is that the swap is one for one by measure and nothing else changes. Keep the acid, the proportions of onion and pepper, the jar size, and the processing time exactly as the tested recipe gives them, since that’s what was actually tested.

That means any of our tested tomatillo salsas and sauces will take green tomatoes straight across, which is handy in a northern garden where green tomatoes are a lot easier to come by than tomatillos.

• Salsa Verde (Tomatillo Salsa) A tested verde salsa that takes green tomatoes one for one in place of the tomatillos.
• Roasted Tomatillo Salsa Roasting deepens the flavor, and green tomatoes roast up just as well.
• Chipotle Tomatillo Salsa Smoky chipotle heat over a tart green base, tomatillo or green tomato.
• Canning Tomatillo Sauce (Enchilada or Simmer Sauce) A smooth green cooking sauce that works the same with green tomatoes swapped in.

And if you’d rather start from a recipe already built around green tomatoes, our green tomato salsa verde does exactly that, with the proportions worked out for green tomatoes from the start.

Sweet Green Tomato Recipes: Jam, Marmalade, and Pie Filling

The sweet green tomato preserves are the real old-fashioned treats, the kind of recipe that makes people raise an eyebrow until they taste it. Tomatoes are a fruit, after all, and green ones take to sugar and spice every bit as well as they do to vinegar and salt.

I once had the privilege of judging a rural pie baking contest, and one of the standout entries was a green tomato pie made by a seven-year-old girl. Green tomatoes do so well in sweet recipes that the National Center for Home Food Preservation went to the trouble of testing a green tomato pie filling for canning. If you’ve already met red tomato jam, the green version will feel like a natural next step. Green tomato mincemeat belongs in this group too, an old-fashioned spiced filling that simmers the tomatoes down with apples and dried fruit until no one would guess there was a tomato in it.

• Canning Green Tomato Pie Filling An NCHFP-tested pie filling that bakes up tasting a lot like a tart apple pie.
• Green Tomato Marmalade
• Green Tomato Mincemeat A lab-tested Bernardin mincemeat that simmers green tomatoes with apples, dried fruit, warm spices, and a splash of brandy into a pie and tart filling.
• Old-Fashioned Green Tomato Jam A spiced jam that proves tomatoes really do belong on the fruit side of the pantry.
• Italian Green Tomato Preserves

Green Tomato Canning FAQs

A few questions come up again and again when people start canning green tomatoes, mostly around acidity and safety. Here are the ones I hear most.

Come February, when the garden is buried under snow and the seed catalogs are the only green thing in the house, a shelf of green tomato preserves is a quiet reminder that nothing from the patch went to waste. That late-season scramble to beat the frost pays off all winter long.

If you’re looking to put up more of the harvest, our rhubarb canning recipes and zucchini canning recipes tackle two more crops that have a way of overrunning a garden, and I have a list of fig canning recipes too.

Green Tomato Canning Recipes

Southern Chow Chow (Traditional Green Tomato Relish)

Old-Fashioned Green Tomato Jam

Pickled Green Tomatoes (Old Fashioned Canning Recipe)

And since green tomatoes are just one stop along the way, here are more tomato canning recipes for when the rest of the patch finally ripens up red.

More Tomato Canning Recipes

Classic Vegetable Soup

Roasted Marinara Sauce (Waterbath Canning Recipe)

Canning Spaghetti Sauce with Meat (NCHFP Recipe)

Looking for something that isn’t here? Use the search box to find a recipe for whatever the garden hands you.