Making Pasta Sauce - First Attempt

Remember last week when I said I was going to make pasta sauce on Saturday?  Well, I finally got it made yesterday.  I guess I'm proving to you what a procrastinator I am.   I'm titling this post "First Attempt" because I'm thinking I might make it again one of these days.

Making the sauce went quite well, actually.  If I'd know it was going to be that easy (and that I could get Victor to turn the crank on the Squeezo for me), I wouldn't have procrastinated it so much.  I divided the work up over two days, which made it even easier.  Here's the recipe I used and what I did:

This is a variation on the National Center for Home Food Preservation's Spaghetti Sauce without Meat recipe.

Basic Pasta Sauce - printable version

15 lbs tomatoes (about 40 medium sized ~6 oz tomatoes)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup green pepper
1 lb fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional)
4 cloves garlic, minced
2-1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp minced fresh oregano
2 tbsp minced parsley
1 tbsp minced fresh basil
1 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp brown sugar

Yield - About 6 pints

Step 1 (I did this the night before) - Cut the tomatoes into quarters.  Place in a large stock pot.  If the tomatoes aren't very juicy put a little bit of water in the bottom of the pan (a cup or less) just so the tomatoes on the bottom don't scorch before they start producing juice.  Bring tomatoes to a rolling boil and cook for 20 minutes.  Turn off heat and allow to cool slightly.

Step 2 (I did this the night before, too) - Put the tomatoes through a food mill or sieve and place back into the large stockpot.  I use a Squeezo Strainer (thanks MOM!) which works like a dream.  My tomatoes resembled tomato juice or tomato soup when I was done.  I was skeptical that this would turn into sauce, but it absolutely did by the end.  At this point I put my stockpot of tomatoes into the fridge because it was late and I was tired.

Step 3 (The next morning for me) - Saute the onions, peppers, and mushrooms (optional) in the oil until tender.  Towards the end of the cooking time, add the garlic.  This is so the garlic doesn't get burned and bitter.  Stir the cooked vegetables into the tomatoes in the stock pot.

Step 4 - Chop up the herbs and add them along with the salt, pepper, and sugar to the tomatoes.

Step 5 - Bring the tomato mixture to a boil.  Reduce the heat so that you get a low, not too excited, boil.  Boil the sauce, stirring occasionally, until it reduces to the texture and consistency you like for pasta sauce.  This took me about 5 hours, stirring every half hour or so. 

Step 6 - You can either freeze or can your sauce.  Freeze in airtight containers or food saver bags.  Can in a pressure canner at 11 pounds of pressure; 20 minutes for pints, 25 minutes for quarts. 

So, that's how to make it.  Here's what I thought of the end product.  I found that it had a nice cooked tomato taste, but didn't have enough spice to it.  If I make it again I'll probably double the amount of the fresh herbs I used. 

I also wasn't impressed much by the yield.  It took a lot of tomatoes to produce 6 pints of sauce.  It wasn't particularly cost effective.  The tomatoes alone cost me about $7.00 and produced 96 ounces of sauce.  I can regularly find 28 ounce jars of pasta sauce on sale for $1.50 a jar.  I could get 4 - 28 ounce jars for that $7.00 which is 112 ounces.  And that wouldn't require much work.  I go to the store anyway.  The key money saver would be home grown tomatoes, which I'm going to attempt this year.  I'm not sure how well they'll do here in Arizona but I'm going to try.  The key, I've been told, is that Arizona Shade (with some morning sun) equals Full Sun everywhere else.  Otherwise, the tomatoes get hot inside and burst their skins before you can pick them.

I will most likely be trying this process again.  I want to use Roma Tomatoes and see if they produce less juice that has to be reduced and therefore more sauce yeild.  The tomatoes that we got on the good deal by the case were round and more juicy. 

Click here for a printable version of the recipe without all my commentary.

Are you going to give it a try?  Let me know how yours turns out!

Thanks for playing!
Jan

Adventures in Salsa Making

Happy Friday! I've been working on this post all week! I knew starting this blog would add another thing for me to do, so I might not get to it every day. But, for those of you who are interested in making and canning salsa, here's how our big Salsa Making Day went!

First off, there are a few lessons we learned...

1. You always seem to need more chili peppers, so buy more.  We were pulling them out of the freezer and even resorted to canned by the end of the day!  If you end up with extra, just peel, seed and chop them anyway.  Freeze them for next time!
2. SIT DOWN!  No, not right now, I mean when you are having a canning day (no matter what you are canning)... If you want to save your feet and back, do all the chopping sitting at your kitchen table.  This means that when your friends arrive to can with you, don't dump all the stuff they bring on the table! 
3. Never ever, under any circumstances, attempt a big canning day without an extra supply of Diet Coke!  Ha ha ha ha ha!  I was ready to do just about anything for a Diet Coke by the end of the day, and I wasn't the only one!

Okie dokie... with those little guidelines out of the way.  Here's how our day really went.

We had planned to get started just after 7:00 am, but we really didn't get going until almost 9:00.  Chalk it up to trying to get stuff done before we went to Alyson's and the yakking we did when we first got there.  Oh well.  Of course, I forgot half of what I needed and had to run back home and get things.  Luckily Alyson only lives a couple of blocks away from me.

We decided to divide up the duties which worked quite well.  I highly recommend it.  We had an Onion Chopping Station manned by Destiny, a Chili Chopping Station manned by Me, and a Tomatillo Chopping Station manned by Alyson.  After the Tomatillos were chopped Alyson moved to the Tomato Blanching Station.  After all the onions were chopped, (thanks to the Onion Chopper my mom gave once.  I love that thing.) Destiny switched to the Tomato Peeling Station.  Then they both merged into the Tomato Seeding and Chopping Station.  In the meantime, I gave myself a nice blister chopping all those chilis!  But that was fine by me, I'd rather have a blister than handle raw tomatoes about any day.

Our tomatoes were surprisingly meaty considering they were the round kind.  We got 7-8 quarts of chopped tomatoes out of a 20 pound box.  We decided to use my favorite salsa recipe, after all, which is normally used with Roma Tomatoes.  These ones seemed firm enough to give it a try.  I'll list the recipe below.  We piled up Mount Tomato in a giant bowl while we worked.  It was kind of like building a sand castle.

We varied the kinds of chilis we used.  In one batch we used poblano and jalapeno chilis.  In another we used anaheim, jalapeno, and habanero chilis.  The last batch was by the book and we used anaheim and jalapeno chilis.  It was fun to try the different varieties and see how the flavor changed.  The poblano and anaheim chilis all had to be roasted and peeled.  That's kind of a pain, but doable.  The skins on the jalapeno and habanero is thinner and you don't have to peel them. 

Meanwhile, picture all our children going crazy running around the house and backyard.  Thank goodness we live in Arizona and it was a beautiful day!  We even managed to remember to feed them lunch.  Impressive!

By about 5:00 pm we were pretty wiped out and were faced with 1 1/2 boxes of tomatoes.  We made up a batch and send it home with Destiny.  She was just soooo exhausted.  Alyson and I cranked through one box of tomatoes with the help of her wonderful hubby Chris.  We made up our batch and I took half of it home to finish up there.   I also took the last of the tomatoes to try making spaghetti sauce with (maybe tomorrow). 

The easiest part of the day was probably the actual canning part!  If you use a pH tested recipe like the one we used from the NCFHP website, then you can water bath can the jars.  15 minutes in the canner and they were done! 

The next day we met back up at Alyson's and exchanged jars.  All total we made 52 pints.  Pretty amazing, if you ask me.  And tasty, too!  I'm going to crack open my first pint at Game Night at the Davidson's tonight.  Yummmmm!

Don't they look pretty?

One last thing, Alyson saved up the tomato cores and seeds in a bowl while we were working.  I gave her my juicer to try juicing the leftovers.  She ended up with three quarts of tomato juice out of the stuff we normally would throw away!  Talk about Provident Living!!!!

Okay, here's the recipe.  This recipe comes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation website.  You can read the original recipe by clicking on the title below.

Tomato Salsa with Paste Tomatoes - printable version

7 quarts peeled, cored, chopped paste tomatoes

4 cups seeded, chopped long green chiles
5 cups chopped onion
½ cup seeded, finely chopped jalapeño peppers
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 cups bottled lemon or lime juice
2 tablespoons salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
2 tablespoons ground cumin (optional)
3 tablespoons oregano leaves (optional)
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro (optional)

Note: This recipe works best with paste tomatoes. Slicing tomatoes require a much longer cooking time to achieve a desirable consistency.

Yield: About 16 to 18 pints

Hot Pack: Combine all ingredients except cumin, oregano and cilantro in a large saucepot and heat, stirring frequently, until mixture boils. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add spices and simmer for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Ladle hot into clean, hot pint jars, leaving ½-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace if needed. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened, clean paper towel; apply two-piece metal canning lids. Process in a boiling water canner  for 15 minutes (adjust for altitude).

A word of note: Don't mess with the recipe beyond chaging types of peppers or the amount of seasonings and herbs.  You don't want to change the acidity of the salsa to be less acid (more vegetables than tomatoes will do this).  Less acid will mean that the salsa is unsafe to can with a water bath canner.

There you go... Salsa Making Day was amazing and exhausting!  I'll report on how the pasta sauce turns out next week! 

Thanks for playing!
Jan

It's Salsa Day!

Happy Tuesday! Today I'm heading over to my friend Alyson's house to make and can salsa.

I think I'm going to try a new recipe, so I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow. Lately, when I've been canning, I've been using recipes from the USDA canning website: The National Center for Home Food Preservation. It's a mouthful of a name, but it's got a ton of great info for safe canning. I made their Salsa from Paste Tomatoes recipe in the fall and really liked it. This time I was able to order a 20 pound case of tomatoes from Bountiful Baskets. Unfortunately, they are the round slicing kind of tomatoes. So, I'll be trying NCHFP's recipes for Tomato/Tomato Paste Salsa so it won't be watery. Look for a report tomorrow!

Thanks for playing!
Jan