Homemade

This year, rather than canning tomatoes, I've decided to make and freeze batches of marinara. I realized that for the most part, I use my canned tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce anyway. I love my home-canned, home-grown, delicious organic tomatoes, but the canning season itself always seems to come at a time when I don't have time to perform all that labor-intensive canning nonsense. I tried freezing tomatoes a few years back, at the recommendation of several helpful friends, but I learned that I really dislike working with frozen tomatoes. They seem so unappealing to me. I ended up throwing bags and bags and bags of tomatoes into the compost heap the following year.

On average, I go through at least one quart of purchased marinara weekly throughout the year. And making marinara to freeze is -- at least it seems it to me -- less work than canning tomatoes. The process seems less overwhelming, and maybe even more satisfying. It takes a few more raw materials, and after the skins and seeds are milled out, and the sauce cooked down to thicken, it results in a smaller volume of sauce per pound of tomatoes, but still, I've been ending up with three quarts each Saturday for the last three Saturdays. I still have a way to go to fulfill my annual needs for marinara, but the tomatoes are still producing and ripening in my garden, I've grown plenty of onions, and the basil is still growing (though there has been a cold snap recently, to which the basil takes umbrage. So that might be the end of that.) I didn't grow my own garlic this year (boo! hiss!) so I had to purchase my garlic at the farmer's market. 

So if you own stock in Bove's, I'm sorry. I will be purchasing less of their goodness this year. Because I have made my own, even more delicious, goodness. And I know exactly where all most of the ingredients have come from: My garden.  

 

Comments

[Joannah]

I suddenly have an overwhelming desire for spaghetti marinara. Mind you, there is no such sauce in the house, and I've already had dinner, so this is clearly all in my mind. Still, looking pretty good!

[kmkat]

Is it TMI to tell you that my mouth started watering as I read this post?

[Seanna Lea]

That is some excellent looking jars of sauce (or as my Italian American friends say, gravy). I'm hoping I'll have some growing goodness next year. My growing season is a lot longer here, so I will be spending my winter doing some research.

[Manise]

I make my basic tomato sauce the "Local Flavors " by Deborah Madison way. Lots of quartered tomatoes in a pot set to moderately high heat and shake the pan or stir initially to prevent sticking and let it cook down in its own juices for a while. I add whole basil (or other herbs) and push it into the hot sauce so it doesn't turn brown and cook a bit more. I let it cool in the pot and run it through the moulie. I ladle this into gallon freezer bags and expel all air so the I have a very flat package to freeze. During the winter I take one out, bend and crack the frozen sauce into pieces, cut the top of the ziploc bag and dump it into the pan to heat up or directly onto braised meats in the pan to stew. Very quick and easy on both ends of the process. It stores really well in the freezer too.

[Mary K. in Rockport]

What's your method of getting the skins off? I get very tired of doing that even though the end result is so delicious.

[Elizabeth]

Since I don't have a freezer I will be canning a bushel of tomatoes at the end of the week. Yes most of mine goes into sauce but I don't have a pressure canner either so tomatoes in jars it is! A once a year chore but no actual BPA-lined cans to buy and deal with - hurray!

[BeckyinVT]

I've always canned sauce instead of canning tomatoes. Like you said, it takes up less space, and that's what I want the tomatoes for anyway.

The bonus being that compared to the cooking down of pasta sauce the canning seems like an easy step at the end. And even Ball's website will tell you that waterbath canning is still ok for tomato sauce. I like to up the acid content of mine by adding wine just in case ;-)