Skip to main content

Tomato Sauce

Summer is a wonderful time of year for anyone who loves food. The harvest brings a cascade of flavors, smells, and sights. Canning allows us to capture those sensations and replay them in the cold winter. And the canning process is fun in itself.

Here is my updated process for tomato sauce. I've been canning sauce for about 20 years and I am still working on my technique.

This batch comes from Osage Farms, my favorite farm stand, just north of Clayton.

I start by taking the stem connectors out of the tomatoes (Romas) and cutting them in half. I then cook them on the stove for a few minutes. Once cooked, I can drain off excess water. The longer you cook tomato sauce, the more acidic it gets. Draining water helps reduce the cooking time; the water is pretty clear so it doesn't take out much flavor. This step also loosens the skins which I can pick off with a fork.

I also sweat some onions.

I throw everything into the crock pot. For a long time, I cooked my sauce on the stove, which required me to do the Italian grandmother thing and tend the pot. The crock pot is much easier---I don't know why it took me so long to figure this one out. And the batch I can fit in my crock pot is five quarts, which is a pretty good fit with my canner. I cook for about four hours on low.

I then pack it into quart jars and process it in the pressure cooker. This is my second box of tomatoes this year, yielding a total of 20 quarts. That is enough to keep me content until the next harvest.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.
Post a Comment
Read more

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...
2 comments
Read more