Tomato sauce is synonymous with Italian cooking; it's used to top every kind of noodle, pasta dish, and even pizza! The sheer versatility of a great red sauce makes it a must have for your pantry shelf, but why not bring the taste of a fresh tomato sauce to your home anytime by freezing a large batch each fall. Tomato sauce freezes beautifully, lasts forever, and is easy to make-follow these simple tips and you'll have that garden-fresh flavor a top your Italian creations all year long.
Of course, to start you will need tomatoes and lots of them! To make a sufficiently large batch of sauce you should start with no less than 20 lbs of tomatoes. While you should have no problem obtaining 20 lbs from your garden, those of you without a green thumb might need to shop around for a bit before deciding where to make your purchase. Try looking at farmers markets, local farms, and road-side stands for your tomatoes to save money. Keep in mind that not all tomatoes make a great sauce, so keep your eyes peeled for healthy Roma tomatoes, plum shaped tomatoes. They must be red and ripe. These variations meaty texture and limited seeds make it the perfect tomato for sauces, stews, and soups. (Buy or pick your tomatoes no earlier than three days before you plan on making the sauce, this is about the shelf-time for a ripe tomato. Don't refrigerate tomatoes either; they begin to lose their flavor within the first forty minutes of refrigeration.)
Wash the tomatoes and cut them into thin slices. Take out the seeds and liquid inside. Once the tomatoes are cleaned, seeded, peeled and sliced you have two options. First, you could follow a standard sauce recipe, sautéing onions, garlic with extra virgin olive oil on the stove, adding the tomatoes, and pinch of salt , and then letting your sauce simmer for an hour or so ,till most liquid is evaporated . This method will provide you with ready-to-serve sauce, but it is time consuming-chances are you will have to make more than one batch to use all those tomatoes. Your second option would be to heat the tomatoes on top of the stove until they are soft enough to run through a blender or food processor. The result is a fresh tomato base that can be added to later. This method gives you the benefit to alter your sauce each time you unthaw a portion--you can make it into pasta or pizza sauce! Also, depending on the meal you plan to prepare you can add your spices accordingly, simply place the tomato base in a skillet over your already sautéed onions and garlic and let simmer for about 20 minutes or so, adding your fresh basil at end of cooking.
If you want a hot, spicy sauce-you can add 1 dry red hot pepper while simmering. Whatever you decide, freeze small portions of the sauce in zip-lock bags or air-tight Tupperware to keep your tomato sauce fresh. Then, when the time comes, simply thaw and enjoy!
