Rozanne Hall’s green tomato mince filling and crumb topping recipes
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Vegetarian | 21 comments
Our green tomatoes for this recipe
Rozanne was a war baby born in the UK. Her father was a Canadian Army engineer serving in England and the continent who met her mother in Surrey, who was from Cork, Ireland. Rozanne grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia and has lived in Oregon, near the California border, for over 25 years.
Rozanne and her husband had a large garden in their Oregon home for years and now have a new (hobby) hay ranch where they have cattle, horses and chickens. Rozanne wrote,
“I love making lots of things – seedless blackberry jam, chili sauce, mince filling from green tomatoes, pickled beets, to name a few.”
With a large harvest of green tomatoes I was very interested in the green tomato mince filling.
Rozanne explained that this is a sweet filling.
“This filling can be used in cookies or squares or just served warm over ice cream, but I personally mainly use it in pie. My husband loves it for Thanksgiving or Christmas especially, and my daughter-in-law just requested it for her birthday next week”.
Rozanne generously agreed to share her recipes and I have put the American/European coversions below.
Rozanne Hall’s mince filling recipe
(sometimes called mincemeat still even if there is no meat)
Mix together:
6 cups (1 kg) chopped, peeled apples
6 cups (1 kg) chopped green tomatoes (don’t peel)
Add:
4 cups (800 g) light brown sugar
1 and 1/4 cups (300 ml) cider vinegar
2 cups (300 g) golden raisins (regular ok)
3 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
“Bring gradually to a boil, in a large pot, and simmer for three hours, stirring often. Add 1/2 cup (115 g) butter and mix well. Then put in jars and process if you wish for 25 minutes. (I assume you don’t need directions for that part.) I usually put in pint jars (UK 1 pound jars), not quite full, and freeze, since I have freezer space and I don’t make a huge amount of this. It makes about 5 pints (UK 6 jars). Each pint is enough for an 8 inch pie. I usually just use a single crust and put my crumb topping on top.
Sometimes I chop the tomatoes, even the apples, when I have them, but no time, and freeze the chopped products and later thaw them out and make the recipe.”
The crumb topping sounds delicious too. Here is the recipe.
Rozanne Hall’s crumb topping recipe
Blend with fork:
1 cup (230 g) soft butter or margarine
2 cups (200 g) flour
Add:
2/3 cup (50 g)coconut
1 cup (200 g) brown sugar
1 cup (120 g) chopped pecans or walnuts
“Use to cover thickened pie filling in an unbaked pie crust and bake at 425 degrees (220c / 190c fan) for at least 20 minutes. You can use over any cut up fruit with no crust if you wish.
I usually double this and keep it in a ziplock bag in the freezer so I always have some on hand.”
For conversions between American/UK
This site is the best on the Internet. Great for converting volumes (cups) of different ingredients into the equivalent weight.
N.B. We have a great green tomato chutney recipe.
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After trying the tactic of freezing the chopped tomatoes and apples, I suggest cutting the vinegar at least in HALF – mine became too soupy, will have to drain before making pies.
This is a great recipe. It goes a wonderful dark brown colour, and smells delicious whilst cooking. The only thing I would query is the 3 hour cooking time. Mine was on the lowest heat possible, and was starting to dry out after 2 hours, so I potted it up. It’s certainly a useful way for getting rid of those pesky green tomatoes!
Hi there and thanks for the yummy recipe. Just so you know, at the bottom of your post you have your conversions and you call them the “American” system versus the the “European” system. This is toatal error as it is the “Imperial” system versus the “Metric” system. There are only 3 countries in the world that use the archaic and inferior Imperial system, USA, Uk, Burma, and Liberia. The rest of the world uses thew metrice system. As far as your cup conversions, this is wrong as well. There is about 236 ml in a cup not 225. Maybe a good idea to do a bit of research on the internet before you post recipes etc.
Thanks Danny thats great….I have printed the conversions from the site and I am ready to cook… heres hoping! Valerie
Hi Valerie – We bought a set of American cup measuring thingys but here is a good site for getting your conversions right:
Hello there! I am new to this cooking lark and really can not find anywhere that converts the cup measurement to weight in ounces… I have all the ingedients ready for the green tomato mince filling and just want to get cracking with it…. the conversion at the end of the recipe is one cup = 8fl oz ?? help I am confused……Valerie
It never ceases to amaze me how small the world is. Here I am sitting at my laptop in England where I now live, reading an English Blog about a green tomato recipe from Oregon–Southern Oregon no less.
I was born and raised in southern Oregon. We lived on a small farm just outside of Phoenix. Later we moved to Jacksonville, an old gold rush boom town.
Next year I will be having a garden and will put in some tomatoe plants so this recipe will come in handy. My father was from South Carolina so all of our green tomatoes were used for making Fried Green Tomatoes. If you plan to try Fried Green Tomatoes fried in bacon drippings, be sure to use smoked streaky bacon. The flavor is wonderful.
Week off coming up, lots of apples & green tomatoes probably won’t ripen any more now so thought I would try this – I know from reading other pages & comments that there have been several good sites mentioned for converting American measures to English but couldn’t put my hand to them & so googled for one – found Delia online quite good for general but the one below had everything from this recipe (except the tomatoes didn’t specify green)so I thought I’d share it even if it’s been mentioned before. (Probably a dozen times!)I don’t know how to link so I’ll just write it (really must come into the 21st Century sometime). onlineconversion.com
Looking forward to trying this. Thank you for another delicious sounding recipe – am just off to try the spicy parsnip soup.
Thank you! I made some yesterday and it is now sitting in the freezer waiting to be made into delicious pies at some point nearer Christmas. It smells lovely!
Hi Sue
Hope that it works for you!
Hi Jackie
I reckon that it can be used immediately as Rosane didn;t say that it needed to mature.