Tomato Sauce from Fresh Tomatoes
Make the Basics: Tomato Sauce from Scratch
How to make delicious tomato sauce fresh from the garden!
RECIPE
Homemade tomato sauce has a sweet freshness you’ll never find by using canned tomatoes. That’s because when you simmer fresh tomatoes into sauce, you preserve the taste of the tomatoes at the peak of their ripeness. You can choose a single variety of tomatoes or mix together many sizes and colours of heirloom tomatoes. The different flavours are subtle and unique.
This chunky tomato sauce goes well with pasta, meat, grilled vegetables, and is good on homemade pizza. You can double or triple the recipe to make extra sauce to freeze. Even after freezing, this sauce is like a bite of summer. So worth it!
Serves: 4
To blanch, drop the cored tomatoes into boiling water for one minute.
4 pounds (1.8 kilos) ripe tomatoes (about 25 plum tomatoes or 12 large sauce tomatoes)
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon salt
fresh ground pepper
6–8 fresh basil leaves, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
1/4 cup red wine
When the skins begin to loosen, transfer the tomatoes into ice water to cool. The skins will slip off easily.
Blanch the tomatoes to remove their skins:
Bring a pot of water to a boil over high heat. Fill a bowl with ice water (or alternately, have a colander on hand at the cold water faucet).
Core the stem out of the tomatoes and score a shallow X in the bottom of each.
Use a slotted spoon to drop a small batch of tomatoes into the boiling water. Cook for about a minute, until you see the skin beginning to peel. Transfer to the bowl of ice water for about 30 seconds (or transfer to a colander and run cold water over the hot tomatoes).
Once the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, the skins will slip off easily. Discard the skins, roughly chop the tomatoes and set them aside in a bowl. Continue this process until all the tomatoes are blanched, peeled and chopped.
The sauce:
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Cook the diced onions with salt about 10 minutes, until the onions are soft and translucent.
Add the tomatoes with their juices. Add ground pepper, fresh basil, parsley and red wine. Simmer, uncovered, stirring occasionally. As the tomatoes cook down, smash them gently with a spoon to make the sauce smoother. Cook for about 1 and 1/4 hours, until the sauce has reduced by about half and is no longer watery.
Serve immediately, or cool and freeze in nonreactive containers. (We like to freeze in straight-necked glass jars. Be sure to leave head room at the top of the jars.) The sauce can be frozen for up to 3 months.
Note: Preserve extra sauce by freezing (not canning). This sauce is not high enough in acidity to use for canning.
Serving suggestion: Serve fresh tomato sauce with 12 ounces/370 grams of spaghetti or other pasta.
More recipes:
How to Make Oven-Roasted Tomatoes
