Base Tomato Sauce: The Versatile Recipe
The GRANNUS Team
In our limited gardening space, tomatoes are one of the plants we dedicate space to growing yearly because tomatoes are in many of the dishes we eat year-round, and we believe garden-grown tomatoes taste better. Inevitably, at the end of the season, we have more tomatoes than we can consume in a week. We found that converting them into a base tomato sauce that can be quickly unfrozen is the best solution. In the greys of a cloud-covered winter, there’s nothing like that homegrown flavor even after months in the freezer. Once unfrozen, you can add additional ingredients to this sauce or use it as is.
Ingredients
- 3 lbs – whatever variety of tomatoes you have; we like to mix them together.
- ½ cup diced onion, we like white onion for this, but you could use yellow as well
- 1-2 cloves minced garlic
- 2 whole cloves
- 2 bay leaves
- ½ tsp dried basil
- ½ tsp kosher salt
- 1/8 tsp black pepper
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Tools
- Paring knife
- Large stock pot
- Large glass bowl (x2)
- Wooden spoon
- Skimmer or kitchen tongs
- Mason jars (canning jars)
- Freezer-safe lids for mason jars
- Funnel for mason jars (highly recommended)
Prep:
- Wash tomatoes and remove any green stems
- Use a paring knife to hull the tomato core and remove any bad spots
- Dice onion to ½ inch size
- Prepare an ice bath in the glass bowl, several cups of water and ice cubes
- We find it easiest to set it up as an assembly line, with fresh tomatoes on one side of the stove and the ice bath on the opposite side, and the stock pot with water on the stove in the middle.
Blanching and peeling:
- Fill the stock pot 2/3 with water and bring to a boil.
- Score the bottom of the clean tomatoes with a small x, we find it best to do them all at the same time as the next part moves quickly.
- Place several of the tomatoes in the boiling water; the water should still be able to cover the tomatoes – boil them for 45 seconds to 1 minute – the skin will wrinkle
- Remove tomatoes and move them to the ice bath; while those are cooling in the ice bath, you can blanche your next batch.
- Move the ones in the ice bath to the empty glass bowl.
- Repeat until all tomatoes are blanched.
- Remove the skins of the cooled tomatoes by using the paring knife to peel back the skin at the small x you made. The skin should come off easily.
- Note that if you don’t want to make it all into the sauce, you can squish the cooled tomatoes lightly, place them into mason jars, fill to the freeze line, close them with the freezer-safe lids, and freeze them as whole crushed tomatoes.
Cooking the sauce:
- Lightly squish tomatoes with your hands or the back of the spoon, set them to the side.
- Heat olive oil on medium till warm.
- Add diced onions, and sauté until softened ~3 minutes.
- Add garlic and sauté for another 30 seconds.
- Add tomatoes, stir to combine, and help prevent garlic from burning.
- Add remaining ingredients (salt, pepper, cloves, bay leaves, and basil) and stir to combine.
- Reduce heat to medium-low, cover with a lid, and allow to simmer.
- Stir every 20 minutes for the first hour, using the spoon to break up chunks of tomatoes as they soften.
- Reduce heat to low, cook for another 1.5 – 2 hours, stirring every 20 – 30 minutes.
- Let cool.
- Remove the whole cloves and whole bay leaves.
- Place sauce in mason jars, fill them to the freeze line, close them with freezer-safe lids, and freeze until needed.
- Let the jar thaw in the refrigerator for several hours prior to use.
