I am the man. I try so hard to be modest, but I don’t know how else to put it. The texture was perfect. The wife likes it. The kids, who have never liked tomato sauce, like it. And 11 out of 12 jars sealed correctly. Here’s how I did it.
Ingredients
1 large huge can crushed tomatoes (110 ounces)
2 large sweet onions
10 tablespoons (2/3 cup) basil pesto
1-1/2 heads garlic
4 tablespoons dry oregano
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 – 1 cup sugar
extra virgin olive oil
2 pounds ground beef and/or sausage (not shown)
Directions
The Sauce
Don’t fear the garlic. I could easily have gone two full heads in this and been happy with it, but I wanted the girls to like it, too. After removing the cloves from the head, using the flat of your knife or the bottom of a glass lightly crush the garlic. This will loosen up the skin so you can peel it.
Each clove will have a little stem on it.
Cut that off from all of them.
When I’m doing three or four cloves, I’ll mince it by hand. For this much I used the mini-food processor. Transfer the minced garlic to a bowl large enough to hold the chopped onions.
The onions they need to be in small-enough pieces that they sauté quickly, but there’s no need to go really small. Cut the stem end off and cut in half through the root.
Peel the papery outer layer or layers off.
Slice in half or thirds lengthwise, not quite all the way to the root, then chop from stem end to root end.
Transfer to the bowl with the garlic as you finish each half.
Coat the bottom of a large pan or dutch oven with olive oil over high heat, then add the onions.
Make sure there’s enough oil to coat all the onions well, and sauté until they are translucent. Stir often enough to keep the garlic from burning.
Once the onions and garlic are cooked, add the tomatoes and salt. This is a really large can, and the dutch oven is pretty deep. If you hold the can to the side it will splash. Like this.
Oops. So lower the can right down inside the dutch oven to pour it in.
Much better. Now stir the onions and garlic up from the bottom.
Add the pesto and stir it in. (Yes I’m still using my frozen pesto from my basil crop two years ago.)
Put the lid on loosely, so that the steam can vent, and turn the heat down low.
Leave it to simmer for at least a half hour, then get your immersion blender
Hold the blender at a slight angle so it will draw the onions in, and process the whole pot. Take care to get down into the corner of the pot all the way around.
Check the consistency. If it is too thick, add water until it seems right.
If you’re cooking for a crowd, you’re pretty much done right here. But I was making the big batch to put up for the winter. Not because I have to, just because I like my sauce better than store-bought varieties. So now it’s time for …
The canning
The only special equipment I’ve got for canning — other than the jars and lids, that is — is this funnel.
Arrange 6 one-pint jars in a roasting pan, and use the funnel to fill each jar, one by one.
Make sure you don’t get anything on the rim of the jar, or it won’t seal properly.
Just wipe up any drips with a paper towel. Make sure the rims are clean and dry.
Someone will throw a hissy fit if I don’t mention this: Sterilize your jars before using them. Okay, everybody happy? Now, off the record … tomatoes are pretty acidic. They’re not nearly as prone to going bad as, for instance, fruit preserves. So make sure they’re good and clean, but keep in mind that people used to do their canning over wood-fired stoves in kitchens with dirt floors.
Leave about a half-inch of headspace on each jar. That’s about the height of the threads for the lid. The hot air trapped in the headspace will shrink as it cools. That’s the suction that will seal the jars.
Put all the lids on finger tight. Don’t crank them on really hard, but tight enough that they don’t come loose if you bump them.
Fill the roaster with water about halfway up the jars.
Put the roaster over high heat until the water starts to boil, then reduce to a simmer and leave it for about 10-20 minutes. Remove the jars from the water and set them aside.
MAJOR IMPORTANT NOTE!
Since originally posting this, I’ve done some more research. It seems the directions I was working from were more than a little out of step with current food safety guidelines. More critically, my directions didn’t point out that meat sauce requires different handling than tomato sauce without meat.
Today’s lesson is: When you’re looking in 100-year-old cookbooks, double-check some modern sources to see if we’ve learned anything new since then. We sometimes go down the wrong path — like our completely unfounded obsession with fat — but if you’re going to disagree with modern “conventional wisdom” you should do it on purpose. Not because you didn’t know any better.
There’s a shopping trip for a pressure canner in my future.
A Second Flavor: Brown Sauce
Here’s the sauce I mentioned when I did the dehydrated pepper. The New York Spaghetti House is famous for their brown sauce. (See the FAQ for more about it.) I can’t tell you what it used to taste like before they started the current automated production methods. But my version is pretty good.
Start by adding four tablespoons of the powdered green pepper.
Brown the two pounds of ground beef and/or sausage. Crumble it as fine as you can. (That’s the Pampered Chef Mix N Chop
Add the browned meat to the sauce and stir.
Check the texture. If it’s too thick, add water like before.
Load up six more jars with the brown sauce. Process the same way as the red sauce. Read the major important note above. Use a pressure canner for meat sauce. I was so close to the exact right amount, I had just enough left over after filling the last jar to sop up with a piece of bread.
After you take the jars out of the hot water and they cool off, you should eventually hear a “pop” as the lid gets sucked down. After all the jars have come down to room temperature, press on the top of each one and make sure it’s down. If it’s not, that means you didn’t have a good seal. You can put it back in hot water and heat it until the sauce is hot all the way through. Or you can put that one jar in the fridge and have it for dinner within the next couple of days.
Yup, I had one that didn’t pop. So I put it on some tortellini.
And that’s it.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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25 Comments
This is almost identical to how my Mom and I make it – we used to crush our own tomatoes (bushels and bushels), turned into spaghetti sauce and canned for over the winter.
I was wondering where you found that huge can of crushed tomatoes? All I can ever find is the smaller can – and I have to buy several…
I got lucky and found it at the local grocery store. (Dave’s) Since I process with the immersion blender, I could have used crushed, diced or whole. All they had was crushed, so that’s what I went with.
If they hadn’t had any, I could go to the local Italian market, the Costco, or one of two restaurant supply stores. Yeah, I’m lucky.
I’ve been a lurker for about a month now (been going through the archives) and I wanted to comment on this post. I was just telling my mother yesterday that I wanted to make homemade spaghetti sauce. She said it would take too much time, but honestly this doesn’t seem as long as how my mother makes it when using store bought sauce (hell, she adds diced tomatoes to make it a bit chunky).
Question though-how do you sterilize jars? Do you simply wash them in a dishwasher or any other regular way to clean dishes or is there something special you have to do with them? Second question-you said you could have used diced or whole tomatoes. How would you break those down to get them to be a sauce? Food processor?
If I really wanted to sterilize them, I’d lay them on their sides in the roasting pan, fill with water to half the diameter of the jars, put the roaster lid on, and boil the water for 10-15 minutes. But like I said, tomatoes are pretty acidic, and I’m not nearly as careful as the USDA thinks I should be.
For whole tomatoes, just reach into the pot with your hands and squeeze. It’s messy and squishy, and perfect to let the kids do. (As long as they wash their hands first.)
Wow, that looks great! I love homemade spaghetti sauce. It looks so delicious on top of that tortellini.
Can you make this and freeze it instead of can it? Quart bags? Thoughts please, thanks!
Stephanie, thanks for not asking about the tortellini recipe. (It’s store-bought. Shh, don’t tell anyone.)
Becca, freezing should work fine. If I didn’t plan on filling the freezer with boil in bag meals I’d have probably done the same thing. But since I did can it, my wife suggested they’d make a great Christmas gift.
You canned meat in a hot water bath? You are a braver man than I.
But I have never, ever actually sterilized my jars when I can, either. I fill ‘em with boiling water from the tea kettle to get hot, but that’s about it. But if you DO want to sterilize them (sa), which is of course the recommended procedure by all those industry people who don’t want to get sued if you’re paralyzed by botulism, it’s easiest to run them through the dishwasher and take them out when they’re still hot.
And on that note, I’d just like to say that I’d really like to have a dishwasher. Someday.
Kristin, check out the update. Thanks for making me go do more research.
Looks good, I love pesto with tomato.
You’re welcome! I always like to cause more work for other people.
In all seriousness, though, I’m glad you did the update. I didn’t want to lecture anyone, but canning meat is a little trickier (and scarier, for me) than most things. Of course, a pressure canner is tricky too, but at least assures safety.
I believe in the cook’s version of the Hippocratic oath: First don’t poison your guests.
Wow, canning your own spaghetti sauce — that is impressive. Your immodesty is well-deserved.
I stumbled upon your site today. I'm really enjoying it!
I always make home cooked spaghetti; never store bought. I am by no means "Susie Homemaker", but when I eat I want to enjoy it… ha-ha! My spaghetti is a huge hit in my family, something I secretly (or maybe now, not so secretly) take pride in.
I just felt compelled to add a side note. I never add water to a thick sauce. My view is that I don't want to dilute what I've put together. And instead of using a simple tomato sauce, I use V8 – or a store brand version of V8. I love the flavors involved & it really enhances the sauce.
Keep up the great work! I'm sure I'll be hanging around, checking things out.
JS, we’ll see about that in a couple of weeks when we eat it and no one gets botulism. I’m confident. (I think.)
Jannelle, I wouldn’t have thought to do that. The thing I’d be worried about is th V8 making it too salty.
Drew and Kristen-thanks so much! Really appreciate the advice.
Not too salty at all, Drew. They even have a low sodium version – YAY!
SA, I’d definitely listen more to Kristin about the canning. She did a ton of it this year.
Janelle, I have this rule about prepared food: The more health claims it has on it, the worse it is for you.
Very nice. I have also a site for recipes for cooking, but you have to translate the Google translate. I am from Slovakia.
http://www.irecepty.com
Thanks, Gabriel. Here’s a link for anyone wanting to check out Gabriel’s site. The translation doesn’t pick up everything, which is kind of hard when it’s ingredients that aren’t translating, but it’s pretty close.
Thanks Drew,
The recipe turned out wonderful, I even shared a couple of jars with my two best friends. I did tweak the recipe a bit since I used fresh Roma tomatoes. I also almost ruin the sauce with all that sugar, (next time I’ll use 2 TBS) it tasted a bit more a pizza sauce with sugar. I added a few things like fresh basil, rosemary, and red & green bell peppers. Other then that I LOVED! the way it turned out.
Kim
I’m glad you adjusted to match your own taste instead of following the recipe exactly. That’s why I prefer cooking to baking, you can adjust as you go.
Easy way to sterilize jars – put them in oven – about 150 to 200 degrees (no higher)while you get every thing else ready. Out of way. Not using a burner on stove, etc. 15 to 20 minutes is good. Be sure to use tongs to remove. You can pack a lot in there if you do big time canning like I do. I use a pressure canner. New versions have plenty of safety features to prevent that “blow up” thing everyone is afraid of. Can hundreds of quarts of stuff every year from our garden and the local pick your own. We use, share with the kids, and give as presents. Love it . Grew up doing this.
I know this is a stupid question but when making MEAT sauce, do you have to drain the fat from the browned ground beef before putting it in the tomato sauce?
The depends on how lean your meat was. I didn’t drain mine at all.