Ever have those summers where you’ve got so many tomatoes that you don’t know what to do with them and you can’t even give them away? (It seems like that happens to me every year now-days.) If this sounds like a familiar problem to you, you should try making tomato sauce… It’s really easy, takes only a half hour, and is a great way to prepare your tomatoes for storage.
First, remove the stems and wash all of your tomatoes. If they are large tomatoes, remove the stem socket (not sure if this what it’s called — that woody place at the top of a tomato where the stem was) — I use a strawberry calyx remover, but you can also just use a small knife. Smaller tomatoes, you’ll never notice the stem sockets in your sauce, so don’t bother trying to do anything special to them.
(If you don’t like seeds in your tomato sauce, you may wish to quarter your tomatoes and remove the seeds — but I don’t recommend this. It is a lot of work, and the seeds never seem to be a problem in any of the dishes I use my sauce in.)
Next, put all of your tomatoes in a large pot and set on the burner to medium high heat, and place a lid (preferably a glass one) on the pot. When you see steam start to appear on the lid, take the lid off and stir your tomatoes. Replace the lid.
Keep stirring the tomatoes every couple of minutes from this point on. Eventually the tomatoes will cook down and will take up about half as much space in the pot as they did originally.
(I choose not to salt or season my tomato sauce when I am making it because I may later decide to use my tomato sauce not for pasta, but for an addition to soup or to chili which would need a different flavor profile. You may season it if you like, at this point, though!)
Once all of the tomatoes are cooked down and bubbling, it is ready for a blender. If you have an immersible (stick) blender, you should get that ready. If you don’t have a stick blender or your stick blender is not made to be used with heat, you can let your sauce cool before blending. Whichever method you choose, blend your tomato sauce until smooth.
Once blended, it should keep in the fridge for a week, or you can put it in pint jars for canning, or portion it out into quart bags and freeze it. Enjoy your garden’s bounty all winter long!