You’ve picked your red ripe roma tomatoes, now what!?
There’s so many things you can make with tomatoes, just go through your fridge or pantry right now and count how many items you get from the grocery store that are tomato based.
Ketchup, BBQ Sauce, Pasta Sauce, Pizza Sauce, Tomato Paste, Tomato Soup, Salsa, Tomato Juice, etc.
Let’s Make Tomato Sauce!
We had a LOT of tomatoes, a 5 gallon bucket full, so I filled the sink with warm water and baking soda and rinsed them all off after harvesting.
I knew I wanted to make a bunch of different things with the tomatoes but there’s only so much time in the day so we just started with the base for all of these things, making tomato sauce. I set aside a few tomatoes for salsa, but other than that I cooked them all down to make sauce!
To save time I roasted some of them on a baking sheet and I boiled some of them on the stove.
For starters I cut them all in half and for some of them I cut the top off and cut the inside out of it seemed too hard.
The whole tomato is edible but the inside can be a little tough so some people cut this out, I decided not too because mine weren’t really hard and that would’ve taken a lot more time!
Once I was done cutting them all up I put all of the scraps in a container to take out to the chickens!
I put some of the tomatoes in a large pot on the stove to cook down on medium/high heat (stirring occasionally) and I put some on a large greased baking sheet in the oven at 350. Both methods took about an hour to cook.
Once your pot of tomatoes looks like the picture above and can easily be stirred and tomatoes can be mashed they are done. If you’re roasting them, wait for them to look soft and wrinkly!
Next I took my immersion blender (stick blender) and blended them all up in the pot until the consistency was pretty smooth. You want to get this as smooth as possible, no lumps or clumps, all that should be left in your pot is sauce, seeds, and little tiny bits of skin.
This took me a couple of minutes to get to the smoothest consistency possible.
Next you’re going to run everything through a mesh strainer! No, a normal strainer will not work, unless you’re ok with your sauce being lumpy.
This part is completely optional! If you want your sauce to have all of the skin pieces and seeds in it then you don’t need to strain it, just can it from the pot, but if you want smooth sauce then strain it!
I suggest straining it if you’re going to make ketchup, bbq sauce, soup, or juice, but if you are making pasta sauce, pizza sauce, or salsa then by all means leave it lumpy!
This process can take a while so have patience! But once you’re done stirring and smashing and stirring and turning and smashing again, you should have this beautiful red smooth tomato sauce!
I made some bbq sauce, and then just canned the rest of the sauce to use at a later date to make my ketchup and pasta sauce.
Canning Your Tomato Sauce
You need your sauce to still be hot when you pour it into your jars. Once I had the jars filled to the first line (1/2″ head space) I added 2 tsp of lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt to each pint sized jar. Then I stirred each jar with a long and thin spatula, then wiped off the edges, and placed the lids on top.
Put the lids on just barely tight and place them in your water bath canner (a pot of boiling water with a rack in the bottom).
Your jars need to be fully submerged and the water needs to be boiling, then start your timer for 40 minutes. Put the lid on your pot and let them process.
Once the timer is done, turn the heat off, take the jars out of the pot, and put them on a towel to cool. Take the rings off of the lids and listen to those lids start popping!
Let them cool completely before putting them in your pantry!
I love canning plain tomato sauce because it’s so versatile! I can pull a jar out of the pantry at any time and use it for whatever I’m making at the time! Pasta sauce, pizza sauce, ketchup, bbq sauce, chili, tomato soup, etc!
