Saucy!

  

Remember the 30 pounds of tomatoes I bought last week? I ended up making tomato sauce with them. It was fairly easy, and turned out super tasty! I canned the sauce, so all winter we’ll have some garden-fresh tomato taste!

 

The recipe and instructions are based off of this one here. Depending on how thick you like your tomato sauce, expect it to take 5-7 hours! (But most of that involves only stirring every 15 minutes or so)

 

Tomato Sauce

 

Ingredients:

• olive oil (2-4 T)
• onions, chopped (5-6 small)
• garlic cloves (5-6)
• red pepper flakes (2T)
• fresh basil (1/2 C)
• tomatoes (30 pounds)
• lemon juice

Directions:

• Wash and chop tomatoes. I used Roma tomatoes, and cut them in half.
• Cover the bottom of a large pot with olive oil, heat over medium (I used my two biggest pots).
• Add onions, garlic and spices
• Cook until onions are soft. Add tomatoes. I filled the two pots with as many tomatoes as I could, and as the sauce cooked down, I added more tomatoes

• Allow the tomatoes to cook down, stirring every 10-15 minutes. Adjust the heat, if necessary, to prevent burning.

• Once the sauce has reduced by about 1/3, puree the tomato mixture. I used an immersion blender, it worked great!

• Continue to allow sauce to cook down until your desired consistency is reached. Taste and add spices as desired (I found the sauce to be slightly too bitter for me at this point… I added 2T of sugar)
• Can in a water bath for 35 minutes (pints) or 45 minutes (quarts). Add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice per jar prior to sealing.

Yield: 8+ quarts

(The original recipe yielded 8 quarts for 15 pounds of tomatoes, so maybe I just like my sauce thick!)

 

 

Why 8+ quarts, and not just 8? I used some of the tomato sauce to make pizza sauce! The recipe will follow soon :)