Once you make this fresh tomato sauce, you will wonder why you ever bought the store bought varieties.
Making your own fresh tomato sauce takes quite a bit of prep work, but I promise it is well worth the effort. The flavor from Homemade Tomato Sauce far exceeds any canned sauce you can find at the store. Start with the freshest tomatoes you can find. If you have your own garden or a local farmer’s market, utilizing these tomatoes will help intensify the overall flavor. When buying tomatoes, your goal is to find the most ripe and firm tomatoes possible. In this recipe, I prefer to use roma tomatoes due to their low water content. If you can’t find roma tomatoes, just keep in mind that the more juicy the tomatoes are, the longer it will take to thicken the sauce.
Tomatoes are a pain to peel without blanching them. To make it easier on yourself, bring a pot of water to a boil and let each tomato sit in the boiling water for 30 seconds. Have a big bowl of ice water ready to transfer the tomatoes so they don’t continue to cook. Using this method will make the tomato skins a lot easier to peel. Once you’ve peeled and cut all the tomatoes, another tip to develop a smoother consistency in your sauce is using a variable speed immersion hand blender. These are also called stick blenders and are a very useful kitchen tool that can make this particular job go quicker.
The great thing about tomato sauces is they are versatile enough to be used in a variety of other homemade recipes including soups, risottos, polentas, curries, fish dishes, and of course with pastas. A plain tomato sauce can be reduced down even further to create your own pizza sauce as well.
Sauce Recipes
Homemade Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 30 Italian tomatoes
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1 onion
- ¼ cup red wine optional
- 1 tbsp sugar
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Prepare a large bowl of ice water. Immerse whole tomatoes in boiling water until the skin begins to peel, about 8 minutes.
- Remove with a spoon and place in an ice bath. Let sit until cool enough to handle, then remove skin.
- In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook the onion in the oil until the onion begins to soften, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic at the last minute so it doesn't burn
- Pour in the tomatoes. Stir in the basil, wine, sugar, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to low, simmer for 2 hours.
- At the end you can use the hand mixer to make it smoother as you want
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