Our garden this year caught us off guard a little. We planted a few things not anticipating much fruit, but we were wrong. Very wrong. What do you do with a huge haul of vine-ripened tomatoes? Process them, of course! I read a few different things online about how to do it. We didn’t have anything ready to can them, so we improvised. This process is also a good way to use imperfect tomatoes from your garden since you can cut off the weird parts. Finally something to do with the ones you don’t want anyone to see!
Tip: This entire process is best done with two people since you can work on all the steps simultaneously and in smaller batches. And just be prepared to use so. many. bowls.
Things you will need:
- A large pot for boiling water and later cooking down tomatoes.
- A large bowl filled with ice water.
- A slotted spoon or Asian strainer.
- Fresh or dried herbs of your choice. Also some sugar, vinegar, salt and other things you like to normally season tomato or pasta sauce.
- A food processor- we chose our Ninja blender.
Rinse, remove stem and score tomatoes.
The tops should be cored by making a small cut around the top of the tomato. You don’t need to cut off the entire top of the tomato, just enough to remove the tough stem part. The scoring on the bottom doesn’t have to be deep. Just enough to provide assistance with peeling them after they are blanched.
Blanch tomatoes.
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Drop about 6-8 tomatoes in at a time and let them stay for around 20-30 seconds. You will see splits in the skins and other areas starting to peel. Pull them out with the slotted spoon or Asian strainer and move them into an ice bath and leave them for around 1 minute. Move them to a larger bowl where they can sit until it’s time for peeling.
Peel and process tomatoes.
This was actually easier than I expected. The scoring of the bottoms helped a lot. Place peeled tomatoes in the food processor. It’s ok to use a spoon to really cram them in there. It will save you from running several batches. You can choose how long to run the processor based on how you like your sauce. I’m not a fan of whole chunks, so my plan was to obliterate any sign of them.
I also ended up having to compromise that step and ended up with a mildly chunky texture. Once you’re done, you can put each back into the pot for cooking. Since the Ninja blender is small, we ended up processing about six batches. On the last step, I ended up adding some fresh basil, rosemary and marjoram in with the tomatoes. It smelled divine!
Cook tomatoes and add spices.
Cook times really vary depending on the consistency you’re looking for with your sauce. I thought 45 minutes on a low simmer would be enough, but I ended up going the full 90. I added various dried herbs, salt, sugar, red wine vinegar and some pepper. Also adding something acidic like lemon is good to help preserve it longer. It was a fun night of simmer, taste, simmer, taste, etc.
Tip: if you don’t like seeds, make a plan to strain them out either before you put the tomatoes in the pot to cook or after you cook them down.
Allow to cool and package for storing.
Depending on how much you end up with, this sauce can be easily transferred for canning or freezing. We chose to freeze it and broke it up into quart-sized bags for scalable meals. Keep some out for immediate use and put the rest away for a later date!
PS- We turned this into a delicious meal a few nights later by making some spaghetti and meatballs. We just cooked everything and served our sauce over noodles, topped with cheese and basil.
Cheers!
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