I’d love to have fresh tomatoes available year-round. I’d love to be able to make my tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes. I’d also love to have a pony for my birthday. You think I’m getting what I want?
So, just like last fall, I made another big batch from canned tomatoes. And tweaked the recipe a bit.
Ingredients
giant can crushed tomatoes (106 ounces)
7 heads garlic
2 large onions (between baseball and softball size)
10 tablespoons (2/3 cup) basil pesto
2 tablespoons dry oregano
2 tablespoons dry marjoram
1 tablespoon salt
1 cup sugar
extra virgin olive oil
Directions
Peel all the garlic. You can use the method I showed last time I did a big batch of sauce, or the method below. (If you can’t see the video in your email, come see it at the blog.)
Once it’s all peeled, mince it in a food processor.
Coat the bottom of a large pot with olive oil over medium heat and add the garlic. While the garlic starts to cook, dice the onions and add them to the pot.
Stir frequently until the onions are translucent and the garlic starts to get a little darker. Then add the tomatoes, and stir the onion and garlic up from the bottom.
Add the pesto, oregano and marjoram and stir.
This doesn’t look very appetizing just now. But don’t worry, we’ll fix that.
Put the lid on the pot and simmer over low heat for at least an hour, stirring occasionally.
Oops, forgot to add the sugar.
Once the sauce is thoroughly heated through, process it with an immersion blender (also know as a stick blender).
I’ve seen people scoop their sauce into regular blenders and process it in multiple batches. What a pain in the neck. You can get a stick blender for under $20, and it’s totally worth it.
Until you’ve processed it, you won’t know if you’ve reduced the sauce too much. If it’s too thick, add water and heat it through again. After an hour of simmering, I needed to add 3-4 cups of water. (No, I don’t have a rust problem. I used the empty tomato can to get the water.)
Once you’re done cooking and ready to start canning, arrange the sterilized jars as close as you can to the pot with the sauce.
Using your canning funnel — and seriously, don’t try this without one — fill all the jars to the bottom of the threads. (Technically it’s supposed to be 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch, but I’m not getting out a ruler for this.)
Wipe the rims to make sure there’s no sauce on them, and add the lids and rings.
Fill your canning pot with water and lower the jars in. You can do this without a special pot, like I did last time. But the right stuff makes it so much easier.
Put the lid on and bring to a boil for 35-40 minutes. Check every so often to make sure the water is an inch deep over the lids. Add more if you need it.
Remove the jars from the pot. There’s a special tool that makes this really easy, even if the jars are down in the water. I don’t have one. But now that I have this handy-dandy rack that lifts up and hangs on the rim of the pot, I don’t need it.
Set the jars on a towel to cool overnight.
Now, that should be the end of this. But it’s not. I had more sauce left. Enough for two more pints and a quart. (Yes, that would be four pints, but I ran out of pint jars.)
I loaded up another batch and started boiling them. Then sat down in front of the TV. And fell asleep. Oops.
I woke up three hours later to the smell of tomato sauce. “Hmm, that’s odd. Why does it still smell like … uh oh.”
There was still enough water to cover the pint jars, but the quart jar was sticking out and sauce was oozing out from under the rim. I got everything off the heat and out of the water and left it to deal with in the morning.
Next day, all the jars had sealed just fine. Even the quart jar with the overflow. But just to be safe, I opened it that night and made pasta.
So that’s the last lesson for today: When you’ve got something on the stove, always set a timer.
25 Comments
I got cocky a couple of weeks ago and decided I didn't need no stinkin' timer to make hummingbird food. And God said, "Ha! Take that!"
4 parts water; 1 part sugar. Bring to a boil; turn off heat. Cool; feed to hungry birds. How hard could it possibly be? All I had to do was remember it was on the stove. On high.
If one wanders off and is upstairs working on the computer for An Hour and a Half, bad things happen. I think I may have actually made graphite. I certainly had to throw the pan away and air out the house. Because of the smoke. And, I managed to melt a little bit of the ceramic stove top. Not all the way through, but the top white coat is Gone.
Thanks, God. Lesson learned. Timer ready from now on.
Marjoram is a great herb; nice to see it included in your sauce.
First of all, okay, you win.
Second, I didn't know you could melt the surface. That's weird.
Finally, I should have mentioned in the writeup that I added the marjoram because I didn't have enough oregano, and the two are related. That, and I love marjoram in gravy. And since Italians call red sauce "gravy" I figure I'm good.
I've never been brave enough to try canning, but I would like to learn. It looks fairly simple. How do you know if you did it wrong?
Among other things, the first time I canned tomatoes I learned not to put the jars of sauce out to cool on a couple of layers of towels on the dining room table. I still have a nice, neat grid of rings on the table from that.
If you've never done any canning, I wouldn't recommend trying it without a little more guidance. The Ball Blue Book is an excellent place to start.
Stef, the first way to know you did it wrong is for the lids to not pop down as the sauce cools. Unfortunately, the next most likely way to know you did it wrong is that people get sick when they eat it. If you follow the guidelines from something like the Ball Blue Book, mentioned above, you should be fine.
And learn from my mistake the first time. Don't try to can meat without a pressure canner.
Preserving food for long periods isn't something you want to do from memory. Look it up and follow the recommendations.
I look forward to canning every year… and by the end of the season, I swear I'm never going to do it again! Freezing, too… Starting the season out with freezing Asparagus this weekend!
I never think to go ahead and make a big batch of spaghetti sauce… I've already canned the tomatoes… Hmmm… maybe I'll change up my routine this year and make sauce at the same time! (Sounds like more work!)
Have you tried tomato jam? yum!
Jar lifters and lid pickers are essential canning tools! (Lid pickers are magnetic-tipped wands for lifting the lids out of the sterilizing water.)
StefRoberts, Anonymous is correct. I'd recommend you spend a day with someone who cans before venturing out on your own. Besides, buying all the equipment just to find out you don't like canning… Read a Ball or Blue Book on canning first.
Anytime I make preserves, I don't bother putting them in water and whatnot; I just put the pickles (or chow, jam, etc) in the jars while still hot, pop the lids on, and voila, Bob's your uncle. The lids always seal themselves, and if for some reason they don't, I eat them first.
I have a great food ruination story. My mom frequently makes cottage pudding (it's actually a cake, but whatever), and she always makes a thin, sugary chocolate sauce to accompany it. One night I decided I wanted some hot chocolate, so I turned the kettle on…or so I thought. Ten minutes later I decided I didn't want any after all, but strangely enough when I went to turn the burner off, it was off already!
You can see where this is going. I turned on the other burner, the one that had Mom's leftover chocolate sauce. About 1.5 hours later, I left my room to get a drink and noticed there was about, oh, a foot of smoke on the ceiling (great smoke alarms, eh). The pan was toast, the whole house had to be repainted, etc. I was always the kid ruining stuff.
I wish I had the room to do some canning. I would love to have homemade stuff like this available all the time. But my apartment is, basically, a shoebox.
Barb, I don't have anything against the jar lifters, I've just never seen one when I'm picking up more lids.
Melissa, how old were you when you did that? And have your parents let you live it down yet?
Bob, that whole process was done on the stovetop. I didn't even clear off the little bit of counter space I've got.
I'm not sure how old I was, Drew…12 maybe? Oh, I've lived it down, believe me. My family has done a lot worse, like the time my Dad crazy-glued his fingers together trying to fix my nail dryer. Good times.
Also, when it comes to making preserves and such, it's not the counter space that's the biggest problem; it's the storage space for it afterwards! I have pickles in some very strange places.
this is probably a really dumb question, but do these need to be refrigerated or can i just store them in my cupboard?
Wow this looks delicious. Do you ever leave your sauce chunky and can it? Just wondered how that would turn out. I DO have a garden and always can tomatoes, but I'd like to try the sauce this year. Would I just peel and seed my tomatoes and then crush them in the pot? Also…WHERE did you get that awesome dutch oven? It looks huge and sturdy and I want one!
I didn't even want to read this, because it is NOT CANNING SEASON YET, and I don't want to have to think about it until I'm knee-deep in hot jars and discarded tomato skins, jamming tomatoes into the jars and cursing myself for once again planting FAR TOO MANY TOMATOES.
I'll be doing it again this year. Of course. But not yet. I still have a couple of months to rest before The Crazy starts. The calm before the storm.
Embarrassingly enough, this is the recipe I always use for sauce and it is far and away my favorite, but I make the following changes:
1) I foodmill (is that a verb?) the canned tomatoes into the pot, which makes for very smooth sauce.
2) I omit the veal (don't like veal) and pork ribs. I do include Italian sausage (sometimes chicken Italian sausage for even less authenticity) and meatballs.
The meatballs have always gotten rave reviews from others.
On to my question: Does making the sauce with sausage and meatballs, but removing the meats at the end, mean I have to pressure can the resulting sauce, or is boiling water bath sufficient?
Thanks and as always, Drew, great site, great post.
P.S. I've always wanted to make a lasagna out of homemade sauce and homemade noodles but the stars have not aligned correctly yet. I bet it would be really good though.
Bubbles, these are cupboard safe. This is how our great-grandmothers stocked their pantries, back before tomatoes from Peru were available year-round at the grocery store.
Wendy, yes, peel and seed and toss them in. I've done some chunky, but lately I'm all about the blended. I don't know exactly when that changed. As for the dutch oven, I got it from my wife's great-aunt when she passed away. It's a Magnalite Classic 15-Inch Oval Covered Roaster.
Kristin, isn't it great having a flashback and a premonition at the same time?
Mike, that's not embarrassing, that looks like a good recipe. (Yes, foodmill is a verb, it you want it to be.) That's a good question about the canning. I would use the regular water bath, but I don't know what the experts would have to say. How about it? Anyone out there with canning experience want to chime in?
(Sorry–had to re-post. Typo.)
USDA guidelines would say to use a pressure canner for anything with meat. Because the real concern is acidity, which is what keeps harmful bacteria from growing, and adding meat to the sauce (even if you take it out later) adds fat, which changes the acidity of the final product.
Of course, the USDA is paranoid and doesn't want to get sued if someone is paralyzed for life due to botulism poisoning, so they tend to go overboard and not advise water bath canning for anything other than straight tomatoes and jam. But personally? I'd go with a pressure canner, too. Pretty much anything involving meat at any point is going to be safer with a pressure canner.
Thanks, Drew and Kristin. Botulism can really ruin a good meal, so I'll refrain from canning meat-touched sauce without a pressure canner. I guess I'll just can the tomatoes using my existing equipment, and use those to make sauce in the off-season.
"Botulism can really ruin a good meal."
But it's great for eliminating crows feet.
Yea, I know all about the timer thing….once I forgot to set a timer when I was hardboiling eggs. Well, after all the water evaporated out, those little devils started exploding like mini granades!! After washing off egg mush from my walls and ceilings, I never forgot to use the timer again!!
Seriously good looking sauce! I'm going to give this one a try next week. We're making your London Broil (now that I know WHAT London Broil is!) this weekend for my FIL's birthday and early Father's Day. I'm excited to get it going tomorrow afternoon!! Thanks for the great recipes (and mail me my cookbook fast!!:))
Caroline
I'm with you, Kristin. While it's true the USDA has strong guidelines, when it comes to preserving food, I am a strong advocate for "better safe than sorry"! And I do believe you are 100% correct about the meat thingy… If it's been in the sauce, pressure cooking is a must.
I know people who swear it is perfectly safe to put their jars in the oven overnight… Sure the lids seal… but are the germs dead or waiting for you to open the jar… Sorry, I'm anal about some things and canning is one of them… by the book!
Caroline, I saw a video of someone doing an egg in a microwave until it blew. Impressive. My cousin did it once, not trying to blow it up, just trying to make breakfast. After cleaning it, the microwave still didn't work so he took it apart. He said it looked like someone had dipped the insides in batter. I believe his exact words were, "There can't be that much egg in an egg."
Barb, you mean they just cook them in the oven? What temperature? I guess that could work, but yeah, I'll play it safe on this one.
Thanks all. I've read some books, but I need a hands on lesson, and then I probably still won't be brave enough to try it. Just talking about the possibility of botulism worries me! Last year I was all set to can jelly, got the equipment, jars, lids, then chickened out and did freezer jam.
A slow oven — only 250!! Nah, can't buy that route… Another thing that even my mother did was to use used mayonnaise jars… Another no-no!! Too high a risk of the jars breaking… not to mention their tops may not form a solid long-lasting seal…
Thanks for the link on that pot Drew. I noticed it's aluminum. Do you have any problem with the acid in the tomatoes reacting with the aluminum and causing "off" flavors?
Wendy, I've never noticed anything from it. You can probably tell from the photos, this pot has a mirror finish, so maybe that has something to do with it. It's at least 20 years old, and still looks nearly new.
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