Canning, A Lost Art: Roasted Tomato Sauce

Welcome back! We're continuing with canning tomatoes. I had never canned tomato sauce until this last year. So it was an experiment and it turned out amazing! I found a lot of info about how to make a lot of different tomato sauces but to me some of them were just lacking and weird! So I just pulled out a jar of tomato sauce in my pantry and looked at the ingredients, wow there wasn't that much in it compared to the crazy recipes I've been reading. So I winged it and it turned out amazing! I've gotten so many compliments when I started serving my fresh tomato sauce at parties so I know I've done good. In my book simpler is better! Or at least when it comes to tomato sauce.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

The best tomatoes for tomato sauce are Roma, because the tend to be meatier and have less seeds. But the best deal of tomatoes in town were Celebrity so I got those instead and they worked fine.

For more information about tomatoes and the best varieties used for canning visit my post on how to can quartered tomatoes.

Tools you'll need:

1. Pressure cooker and canner
2. Jar lifter
3. Magnetic lid lifter
4. Canning funnel
5. Regular Mouth Pint Jars
6. Lids and rings*
7. Large baking sheet
8. Blender or food processor

For more information on the equipment used during canning please see my post The Do's and Don'ts of Canning Equipment. 

Ingredients (per batch)

1 dozen medium sized tomatoes

1 large onion

1 head of garlic

Salt

Pepper

Oregano

Basil

Olive oil *

*Warning: If you use olive oil to make your tomato sauce after it's all processed your tomato sauce will be orange and not a brilliant red. If you don't care use it for the flavor. But if you do then just add a small amount of water to the bottom of the baking sheet.

First step is clean clean clean! I know you don't want to eat dirt as much as I do and let's face it we're doing are own canning partly because we want all of that gunk out of our food! I used the cleaning solution that I found here and it worked better then I thought!

 After the tomatoes are all clean cut out the stem and hard core then cut the tomatoes into quarters, skins, seeds and all. If you don't want the skins on them then follow the steps for flash boiling the tomatoes in my post about canning quartered tomatoes. But almost all of the nutrients of the tomato are in the seeds. If you blend the tomato sauce enough, you won't even notice that there are seeds or skins in there.

Lay your tomatoes on a baking sheet, roughly chop your onion and garlic and mix into the tomatoes with a spatula. I then covered my tomatoes in a thin layer with all of my spices. Or you can do this till your desired taste. I decided that when I do this in the future I won't do as much oregano and basil just because all of my recipes that I use tomato sauce in usually add additional oregano and basil. So I'll still add it but a lot less. Drizzle the tomato mixture with olive oil and then mix with your spatula to coat well.

Bake in oven on 375 for 45 minutes or until vegetables are tender and roasted. If the tops of the tomatoes are ever so slightly crisp that is exactly what you're looking for. The roasting will give the tomato sauce a lot of flavor. Yes you can just throw these ingredients into a blender before baking it and then just cook it in a pot, but the sauce won't be as flavorful.

Take all of the tomato mixture and throw it into a blender. Blend blend blend for a few minutes until very smooth. I didn't blend mine enough and afterwards, while eating, I found some chunks of garlic and onion in the tomato sauce. If you want it chunky then by all means don't blend it enough but I wanted my tomato sauce to be really smooth. So I suggest blending it for five plus minutes.

Congratulations you have just made your own home made tomato sauce! If you just want to make a quick fresh sauce without bottling it by all means use this process and skip the canning. You should now have a smooth delicious sauce. My mother-in-law was in town while I was making this and told me that this was the best tomato sauce she'd ever had and she doesn't like tomato sauce! Success!

Use a funnel to pour the sauce into your jars till it reaches the lower line of the neck.

Boil your lids in a frying pan. Keep the water at a light boil you don't want your water to evaporate to soon! This helps soften the rubber on the lids to make it easier to seal to the jar. Wipe the top of the jars off with a damp towel before you put the lids on. If there is any food in-between the lids the jar won't seal.

Use your magnetic lid lifter to lift the lids from the boiling water. Quickly transfer them to your jars and then twist your rings on quickly. You need to twist your rings on so that they're only hand tight, not too tight. So if I take a jar and tighten them as tight as I can it will be a perfect, but if I use a tool (like I do after they're canned) it's too tight. If it's too tight the jar could crack in the canner.

Add water and the jars to a pressure cooker and process at 11 lbs pressure for 15 minutes. When the jars are done set aside on a level table or counter to cool. You will start to hear the lids pop which means your jars have sealed! To check if a jar has sealed or not, once cool, press your finger into the center of the lid. If it pops up and down, it has not sealed. If it's secure, success!

I love how my tomato sauce turned out we've used almost all of it up! Next year I'm going to be doing two different tomato sauces. The original tomato sauce recipe above (with much less basil and oregano) and pizza sauce. Which is a recipe I will be sharing very soon. I figured what the heck it would be a lot easier to just make the pizza sauce, can it and when I need it throw it in a sauce pan without having to throw everything together.

Well I've been working my way up with posts but I've had a lot of page views so far so someone must be liking what I'm writing.... Maybe :) If you like my blog please feel free to follow, share, tweet and pin! Thanks for stopping by and happy canning!