Remember all of the tomatoes I've had sitting all over my kitchen the past few weeks? They took over my counter and every bowl and basket I had available. I've finally gotten them put away, well, at least most of them. I put up 6 quarts of diced tomatoes, 19 quarts of sauce, and 8 pints of salsa. I've given some away, and I'm down to only a handful of cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, and green zebra tomatoes that I'll turn into salsa. I never thought I would be glad to be done with fresh tomatoes, but I guess thats how it works when you grow things yourself and source them locally. It has been a lot of work, but it is so rewarding to have your own home grown tomatoes waiting for you in the winter.
I promised to put up a recipe for tomato sauce, so here it is. Please know that you cannot can this sauce. You might be able to find a similar recipe somewhere that you could can, but this one is meant for freezing.
First you'll need some tomatoes.
You're going to want to wash them, cut them in half, and core them. Remove any tomatoes with blemishes or rotten spots.
Move your tomatoes out of the way to give yourself more room on the cutting board.
Pretend you see a photo of onions and garlic here.
Roughly chop some onions and garlic - about 1 medium onion and 3-4 cloves of garlic for every 20 tomato halves. This is not an exact science - use more or less if you like. Move them to a separate bowl.
Roughly chop some herbs - I typically use fresh basil and oregano, but you can use anything you enjoy - rosemary and thyme would also be quite nice! If you don't have fresh, go with dried.
Put a small can of tomato paste (6 ounces) into a large mixing bowl. Fill the tomato paste can with olive oil and dump it in. Then fill the can 1/2 with olive oil and dump it in. Add in your chopped herbs and some salt and pepper. Use your hands or a whisk to mix it all together.
At this point you'll want to get your pans ready. Line a few pans with aluminum foil. I thought I could skip this step once, and it made a huge mess. Just go ahead and line them. Put a cookie rack on top of the pan. Turn the over to 400 to preheat.
Toss a few cut tomatoes into your oil and paste mixture. Make sure they get coated really well. Place them cut side down on your cookie rack. Continue doing this until you've used all of your tomatoes. Side note: one oil/paste mixture does two pans of tomatoes for me. Once you've got your tomatoes on the pan, mix the onions and garlic with the remainder of the oil/paste mixture and dump it all in some aluminum foil that you bunch together beside the cookie rack. If you don't have room to put the tomatoes and onions on separately, just throw them amongst the tomatoes.
Roast the tomatoes at 400 for about 45 minutes. If you do more than one pan at a time, switch them once.
When the skins look crinkly and a little charred, remove them from the oven. Note: you're house might smoke up. Mine has several times, but I just open the windows and turn on some fans. Don't be alarmed.
After the tomatoes have cooled for a little bit, run them through a food processor along with the onions and garlic. You might have to do a few batches - especially if you're using a 3 cup processor like me!
Place your sauce in clean jars or ziploc bags, and into the freezer they go!
We'll use this sauce all winter long for spaghetti, lasagna, and pizza.
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