Recipe: Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce

With instructions on how to Can.

It’s tomato canning “season” in my house! For the last 2 weeks, I have been canning stewed, diced, sauce, and salsa. This year, I tried some new ways to can to make my life easier and this was one of them.

Last year was my first year canning our garden tomatoes. I made the mistake of only making pasta sauce and stewed tomatoes. The problem? When I needed tomato sauce for anything else (like chili) I had to buy it. So this year, I made almost all my canned tomatoes basic, simple, and ready to be used in anything (I still made some into pasta, but nothing like last year, and this year my dad helped me with salsa).

So in my process to make things easier and more simple, I came up with this idea. Oven roasting my tomatoes. I hate peeling and honestly, when I’m making the sauce, it’s not necessary (which my dad also pointed out to me yesterday when I was talking about all the sauce I have to make).

I take my immersion blender, stick it in the pot, and blend, so why was I wasting the time? Plus… if you have less than stellar tomatoes (mine when picked timely are pretty good, but sometimes my son gets excited and pulls some a little early or a storm has come through and knocked a bunch over), roasting them will help bring out all those good flavors. So… let’s get started!

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Oh! One thing to keep in mind, this is for canning, so it’s basic. If you want to make it into a pasta sauce for dinner tonight instead, skip all the canning instructions and add some garlic to the tomatoes before you roast them. Then add any other ingredients you want (oregano, basil, etc) to the sauce and enjoy.

*Please note: I use Roma tomatoes for this. They are “meatier” and I just think they make a better sauce.

Pre-heat oven to 325°F

Wash Tomatoes

Cut the tops off and half them

Fill a bowl and drizzle with olive oil.

Using your hands, gently toss the tomatoes coating them with olive oil (I use my hands because I can control how gentle I move them around. I don’t want to pulverize them… yet).

Place the halves on a foil-covered baking sheet (the bonus to using the foil is that after they bake it’s easier cleanup AND you can put more tomatoes on the same sheet after you dump the baked ones) and lightly salt and pepper them

Bake for about an hour (maybe less). Basically, when the tomatoes start to wrinkle and you see a little juice coming out, they are done.

Dump all the tomatoes, juice, and oil into a bowl (I personally put them in a pot and cover it with the lid, but that’s because I’m baking about 6 sheets of tomatoes at a time and this keeps them hot) and puree until all chunks are gone.

Canning Instructions:

Pour the sauce into sanitized canning jars (leave at least 1/2″ of space from the top of the jar), wipe clean the rims of the jar, and put the sanitized cover on and tighten.

Process jars in a hot water bath (this is the process of submerging your jars into a pot of water that is at a roaring boil. The processing time is about 35-40 min for quartz & 25-30 min for pints).

When time is up, remove from the water bath and let them cool.

After cooling, check the lids to make sure they either:

Pop down (and stay down)

Are down and do not pop up.

If they pop like a button, you will have to use them right away. Any that are sealed can be stored in a cool dark place for a year or so. *A year is the prime-time that the flavor is there, but they are still good after one year.*

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