Monday, October 3, 2011

Roasting sauce

I was making roasted tomato sauce a bit ago, and mentioned it here.
 I have gotten several requests for how to make roasted sauce so here it goes.
First get a lot of tomatoes.
A dear friend of mine offered to let me buy discounted tomatoes from her CSA (community supported agriculture) share, so I had a full bushel of beautiful paste tomatoes.
I washed those red orbs very well and then cored and cut them in half.
Then I removed all seeds that were readily available (not necessary but makes things go quicker.)
Yes, I left the skins on!  No standing over the hot stove with boiling water.
Then, the larger tomatoes were cut again into quarters and left the smaller ones in halves and placed them skin down in a glass baking dish.
I learned the hard way, make sure they are in the top 2/3 of the oven which is preheated to 350.
Put them in and let them cook for about 45 minutes to an hour.
At this point you have lots of juice and wilted mushy tomatoes.  Drain the liquid off (you can put this through a few layers of cheese cloth and preserve the little bits if you want) and put the remaining shriveled tomatoes into a pot.
Using a stick blender (you could run it through a food processor or blender before putting into the pot, but I am in love with my stick blender) puree the tomatoes and you have tomato sauce...mine was thicker using this method than if I skinned and left it to reduce for hours over the hot stove.  I just heated it up in the pot and let it boil for about 15 minutes so that it would reduce a touch and be hot for canning.
Continue to can/freeze as you normally would tomato sauce.
Salsa, Traditional Tomato Sauce, Roasted Tomato Sauce

(I did the lemon juice and pressure canner method found in the Ball Big Blue Book of Canning.)
One note about this method.  I did tomato sauce both ways (roasted and the traditional remove skins core and remove seeds puree and boil for hours upon hours) this year.  I found this.  After canning, the traditional method continued to be smooth and uniform looking after canning, but the roasted ones separated a little bit and had a chunkier look.  I think this may have been avoided if I had pureed the tomatoes a bit more, but I enjoy some tomato chunks in my sauce...it reminds me what it really  is...TOMATO sauce.
While I had tomatoes on hand, I also made up a year's supply of salsa...the zesty salsa recipe from the same Ball book, but I put in about half of the hot peppers that the recipe called for...okay so some not so zesty salsa...but for our family it was perfect...
I'm thinking of adding some corn and black beans to it once opened for a special treat one cold and snowy day in the future.
Did you do tomatoes this year?  If so, how?
(Linked to Simple Lives Thursdays)

7 comments:

  1. Thanks for this post, I need to remember to try it this way next year. This was my fist time canning (water bath). What a chore! Do the skins breakdown with roasting? Do you oil them at all?

    ReplyDelete
  2. With the roasting the skins don't break down, but they do get softer, and with a good blender, they will just become part of the sauce without being able to discern any difference. I did not use any oil, the juice from the tomatoes will keep them from burning IF you keep it at 350 or less and keep the tomatoes away from the heat source.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love to roast my tomatoes with garlic and olive oil, blend with a stick blender and then add chopped fresh basil for sauce or dill if I am using it as a soup. I didn't put up tomatoes this year as I had enough left over from last year, but next year I have plans for at least 200 quarts. I try to stagger my canning so I don't have to do everything in one summer.xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh! Thank you! No peeling, no seeding - my kind of sauce! Just to clarify - you pour off the juice - so you could have basically sauce and juice from this recipe?

    ReplyDelete
  5. The juice that you pour off is not so much tomato juice, but more of a tomato flecked water...from this recipe you just get a thick tomato sauce.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks for sharing this-you make it look very easy. I'm going to try it this way next year, for sure!

    ReplyDelete
  7. We tried a similar chunky sauce this year. Instead of peeling and seeding the tomatoes we cut them into chunks(cut into quarters and then cut these in half across their middles) and then put the chunks into food processor until desired consistency.

    We also dry tomatoes in an electric food drier. You can read about that process on my blog, "Preserving the Harvest:" http://chocolat-earthcookie.blogspot.com/search/label/dried%20tomatoes

    So glad I found your blog, sisters!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting with us girls...put your feet up and stay for a while.