Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Preserving Food ~ Roasted Tomato Sauce


This sauce is best made with a variety of tomatoes. I used the Champions from the garden, along with the sauce tomatoes and the Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes from the farm.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes (One flat of tomatoes makes about 8 - 10 pints of sauce)
Garlic
Balsamic
Olive Oil
Sea Salt
Pepper
Italian Seasoning

Equipment:

Roasting pans (I used my glass Pyrex baking dishes)
Knife
Large spoon
garlic crusher
water bath canner
clean and hot jars, lids and rings

First, cut all tomatoes at least in half. Even the cherries. If you don't do this, they 'pop' later in cooking and give your sauce a watery consistency. Fill a baking pan with the cut tomatoes about a layer and a half deep. Crush a head of garlic into each baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, 2 Tbs or more of balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and pepper.


Mix well and put in a 400* oven for 40 minutes. About a half hour into the roasting you will smell the tomato sauce. :) When your timer goes off, your sauce should look like this:

Then, VERY CAREFULLY, put it into a blender or food processor and process on low speed with the lid held on (but not tight, only so it doesn't splatter and burn you.) Slowly turn the speed up on the blender until you have your sauce to the consistency you want (I like mine super pureed). During this step, add your Italian Seasoning and any salt and pepper you might need to your taste.

This is what mine looks like when I am done:


At this point, it is the perfect place to let the sauce cool, and put it into bags for the freezer if you so desire. Make sure it is cooled completely in a bowl or in the blender before adding it to the freezer bags. It will separate if you freeze it warm.

Put the jar lids in a bowl of boiling water. Then fill hot, clean jars with hot sauce, and put on the lids and rings (again *very* carefully! Everything is hot at this point!). Process in a water bath canner for 40 minutes:

This is our soup base for tomato soup, our pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, and is dumped into our chili for that tomato flare.

The process is time consuming... but oh so worth it! What an amazing taste this will be come January! If you want to try it... just make one batch to test and see if your family likes it as much as mine does. :)

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I just found my new favorite Web Site. Thanks for everything I can't wait to get started. -Aprill

Val in the Rose Garden said...

April: Hi! Thanks for stopping by. My main website is here:

http://goddesshobbies.blogspot.com/

This one is just my food posts... but all of those are included on on the main website as well.

I hope to see you soon!

Val

Ash said...

Val,

Thank you for all of your posts! I truly enjoy all of your blogs. I used this recipie today and was very happy with the result! Thank you.

Ashley