Slice your green tomatoes and place them in a clean jar. Stack them and put extras around the sides to fill the jar. Add salt and lemon juice to each jar (1/2 tsp salt and 1 tbsp lemon juice to a pint jar, double that for quart jars). Set aside. Mix water and vinegar (1 cup vinegar to 1 gal water). Bring to a boil. Pour over tomatoes in jars until full. Remove air bubbles as usual, close with sterilized lids. Process in boiling water bath for 10-15 min. (Too long will cook them and make them mushy). Let cool. Done! The color will dull just a tiny bit during the water bath, but it’s fine. And the vinegar makes them smell funny when you open them. That’s fine, too.
When you’re ready to cook them, just open them, drain them and rinse them if you’d like. Then fry as usual.
I like to add green tomatoes to fried okra. So I chop up my smaller tomatoes into pieces about the size of cut up okra. And I process them the same way as the sliced ones. Then when I fry okra, I just drain a jar and add it to the okra before I bread it.
Credit: Anthony Simms
Do I have to add the vinegar? I hate vinegar and would rather do without it. Thanks for responding!