I’ve always been a fan of making things from scratch, for the most part, rather than purchasing already prepared, I like knowing what’s in what I’m buying. I like ingredients I can pronounce, and not have to google search. Just like everyone else, time is precious, and sometimes convenience wins the day. When I’m working, there isn’t always time to come home prepare dinner that without cutting a few corners. I do, for the most part, use Sundays for meal prepping, washing, chopping and freezing veggies for the week, washing veggies for salads, and making what I can in advance and freezing such as ravioli, and gnocchi to be cooked later, or soups to be heated and served.
I learned early on that I like making my tomato sauce rather than buying, for one I don’t know why but many sauces have sugar in them I’m not a fan of sugar in my sauce. And two, I also find the sauces are too salty-no thanks. I started buying canned tomatoes and passata and making my sauce, which is great but I wanted to try to make sauce from scratch. So last year, I bought a 25 pound case (1 bushel) of Roma tomatoes, I was up to my elbows in tomatoes, and I learned that there’s a lot more to canning tomatoes than I expected, you need mason jars-and you need to sterilize them, you need citric acid, and you need a lot of patience and time. I completely send out my respect for all my friends who make 8 bushels or more. Yikes! Since I wasn’t canning tomatoes last year, as I wasn’t as prepared as I thought I was, I stored them in zip-seal bags and froze them. This year, I have my jars and citric acid and I’m sterilizing jars to try canning for the first time. A Google search has helped me figure some things out, and I’m on my first pot of sauce, I still have tomatoes for another batch (I’m also trying to “sundried” tomatoes on the stove top-so far it’s going well).

Instead of sharing a recipe with you, because I feel everyone has their own taste in sauce, I’ll tell you the steps I took to make my sauce.

Items Needed:

• 25 pound bushel/case of roma tomatoes
• wash and score the bottom of the tomatoes
• pot filled with boiling water
• food mill (optional)
• bowl
• immersion blender
• bowl with ice water
• large stock pot
• mason jars
• citric acid
• stock pot with boiling water

Steps:

Remove any tomatoes that are spoiled and throw out. Thoroughly wash tomatoes, score the bottom of each tomato with an ‘X’ add a few tomatoes at a time to a pot of boiling water, let them sit for about a minute, then remove and add to ice water. Then starting at the bottom you should now be able to peel the tomatoes easily, if it’s not peeling easily, add it back into the water for a few seconds. *Once tomatoes are peeled, you can remove seeds by putting them through a food mill, over a bowl (or directly over the pot you will cook the sauce), (seeds will remain in the food mill to be discarded). I will add that I thought I had a food mill but didn’t, I’m okay with seeds in my sauce, so I did break down the tomatoes with my hands and added them to my pot. I let them cook and then used my immersion blender to break down the tomatoes into sauce. I let the sauce simmer on low heat for several hours to remove excess water from the tomatoes. I seasoned the sauce with olive oil, garlic, fresh basil, dried oregano, salt, pepper, chili flakes, and fresh parsley (added at the end). Let the sauce simmer until you reach your desired consistency. Boil your mason jars and lids, to sterilize, remove from water, add citric acid, I also added a fresh basil leaf to the bottom of the jar, then added the sauce, place lid and once it is filled add to a pot of water with at least one inch of water covering it until it seals. If the lid doesn’t seal, refrigerate the jar for immediate use. *I used a 1L mason jar and 1/2 tsp of citric acid per jar. Once done, I had seven jars of sauce. Not bad for a first-timer, I look forward to doing this again next year. Enjoy.

Do you have any tips on making sauce you like to share, drop a message?

Chrissie xo

As for the ‘sundried’ tomatoes, they turned out pretty good. I have dried them and then marinated them in salt, chili flakes, garlic and dried oregano. I’m going to let it marinate before I try it.