Homemade Tomato Sauce with Garden Tomatoes

After battling the rabbits in my neighborhood last summer, this year I only planted potted tomatoes. No celery, no greens, no cauliflower – just six large and beautiful tomato plants. And this dedication to one food has given me lots in return. Unlike my tomato disaster in 2011 and a sparse 2013 due to heat and the damn rabbits, there’s no end to these delicious fruits that are sort of vegetables. Now that I’m becoming a tomato expert, I’m excited to try recipes and use every last piece of my harvest. (First, I’ll have to stop Alex from picking them and eating them off the plants like apples).

Bounty of tomatoes

Here’s the first thing I made, adapted from this AllRecipes recipe:

Kailey’s Homemade Tomato Sauce

12 ripe tomatoes, medium sized (or as many as you have!)
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons butter
2 onions, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
3 carrots, diced
3 stalks celery (2 diced, one left whole simmering in pot)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil (from your garden, if animals didn’t eat it like they did to mine.)
1-2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon red chili pepper flakes (optional)
1/2 cup red wine
2 bay leafs
6-12 oz tomato paste (to make sauce thicker and more red)

1. Take all tomatoes and cut an “X” on the bottom of them. This will help with the peeling process. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Have a large bowl of iced ready water. Plunge whole tomatoes in boiling water until skin starts to peel, 1 minute. Remove with slotted spoon and place in ice bath. Keep in ice bath for about one minute. Remove from ice bath and let rest until cool enough to handle, then remove peel and squeeze out some seeds if you want (it’s fine if seeds end up in the sauce). Cut 8 of the tomatoes into quarters and puree in blender or food processor. Chop remaining tomatoes and set aside.

2. While you’re doing the boiling and ice bathing, chop all your veggies and start a large pot or Dutch oven over medium heat. In the pot, cook onion, bell pepper, carrot, celery and garlic in oil and butter until it softens, about 15 minutes. Pour in pureed tomatoes, chopped tomato, basil, Italian seasoning, salt and wine. Place bay leaf and whole celery stalk in pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer 1 hour. Stir in tomato paste and simmer an additional hour. Simmer with cover off of pot if you would like chunkier sauce. Discard bay leaf and whole celery stalk and serve.

Veggies simmering and my bitching apron that my mom made

Your sauce may look a little pink depending on the ripeness of your tomatoes (riper tomatoes = redder sauce) – you can add more tomato paste to make it more red plus thicken it up. Also, once the onion, pepper, carrot and celery mixture cooked for a while, I dumped half of it in the food processor and chopped it up some. This left the sauce with some chunks but also some more sauciness (if that makes any sense).You could skip putting the tomatoes in the food processor if you like really chunky sauce – just let everything simmer longer and mash it down. Or let the tomatoes “cook” longer when you’re boiling to get the skins off. They’ll get mushy in a hurry and you won’t have to process them. Feel free to mess around with the spices and measurements, I like that this sauce will taste different every time I make it. Recipes online say to simmer and cook for 4+ hours – this will make your veggies softer but we couldn’t wait to eat it so I only did 2 hours of simmer.

Delicious finished product

The best part of homemade tomato sauce is how fresh it tastes and it’s not tangy like spaghetti sauce from a jar. Also, if we stop eating it at every meal, supposedly this sauce will freeze well in freezer bags.