My grandmother has an awesome garden. Which means we’re lucky enough to end up with lots of veggies sometimes and there was a basket of tomatoes left over this weekend.
Me: What are we going to do with the tomatoes?
T: Why don’t you make tomato sauce?
Me: like to can? We have 1 basket of tomatoes. That’ll make 1 jar. If I’m lucky.
T: but it’ll be an awesome yummy jar.
So there you have it. Clearly, I’m easily swayed by Toby.
Take some tomatoes. Rinse them off. Then quarter them and throw them in a pot:
Mash the tomatoes with a potato masher. Bring to a boil. Stir often. Wait about 10 minutes. Everything should be pretty soft.
Then put them in a food mill thing. It’s that thing on the left. I hope I’m using it right. It’s been ages since I’ve even assembled it. A fine sieve would work just as well.
Pour the liquid back into the pot and heat to reduce:
Once the thickness is to your liking, add 1/2 tsp citric acid to the bottom of each 500 mL jar. Fill to 1/2 inch of the top. Clean the lip, add the lid, add the ring. Tighten to just tight and then add to the canning pot. Once it comes to a boil, wait 35 minutes. Hopefully you had more than one basket of tomatoes and you ended up with more than one 500 mL jar of sauce:
Well, one jar of sauce and not nearly enough for another jar so Toby bought some tortellini and we used the extra tonight. First he fried up onions, garlic, and pancetta:
Then added the sauce:
And let it all cook together for a while before adding the tortellini:
Yum! Served with some freshly shaved parmesan and there’s enough left over for me for lunch!