How to Make Quick Tomato Sauce for Preserving

A fast, east way to make tomato sauce without all of the tedious peeling and the time-consuming boiling down of traditional tomato sauce. This method preserves the fresh flavor of the tomatoes and is great for using up less than perfect fruits.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Tomatoes
• Blender
• Saucepan
• Glass bowl
• Turkey baster
• Freezer containers or food dehydrator

1. Wash the tomatoes and cut out the stem end, along with any bad spots. While paste-type tomatoes such as Romas work best, you can get a thick sauce out of any type of tomato with this. Don't worry about removing peels or seeds.

2. Puree the tomatoes in a blender until smooth and our the puree into a saucepan.

3. Briefly cook the tomato puree. Stirring frequently, bring to a boil over high heat and boil approximately 3-5 minutes, until the puree turns from pink to red and gets noticeably thinner. Don't worry about the foam.

4. Transfer the warm puree to a glass bowl and let it sit, undisturbed, for about half an hour. As it cools, the solids will float to the top and the liquid will remain in the bottom of the bowl, along with most of the seeds. Some seeds will remain with the solids, but not enough to impact the flavor of the finished product.

5. When the puree has separated, skim the solids off the top, leaving the liquid behind. You can also suck the juice out from under the tomato sauce with a turkey baster. Just squeeze the baster's bulb, insert the baster through the solids to the bottom of the bowl, release the bulb and remove the juice to another container. You can make the sauce as thick or thin as you would like by varying the amount of liquid you leave with the sauce. The remaining can be strained of solids and used as either tomato juice or in soups.

6. Preserve the sauce. To preserve the sauce, freeze in meal-sized portions or spread on dehydrator trays and dry as you would fruit leather. To reconstitute dehydrated sauce, combine one part sauce leather to two parts water and heat, adding extra water to achieve desired consistency.

Tips & Warnings

• Add seasonings to the sauce before preserving it or when you use it.
• This method of making tomato sauce has not been tested for canning safety, and may not be acidic enough to can safely. It is best suited for preserving by freezing or dehydrating.

[kkemp]

on 12/18/2008 Thanks for the info!