Making & Storing Tomato Sauce

The spring of this year, my grandma stayed over at my house for about two to three months. During that time interval she had the brilliant idea of growing tomatoes, a plant she never before tried growing which is weird since tomatoes are so commonly grown.

After she went back to live in her own house, the Roma tomatoes she planted all germinated and my dad had the brilliant idea of not thinning the little tomato plants, meaning he let them grow super densely together so that they formed a miniture tomato forest in my backyard.

This resulted in a problem.

There's TOO MANY TOMATOES IN MY HOUSE.

LIKE WAY TOO MANY.

LOOK AT ALL MY BABIES.
(After taking this picture, I was informed by my dad that there were still two more buckets of tomatoes hiding in the back of the fridge...)

and yes, those green things sticking out are beans...

I have bucket loads of red things that I have to think of every way possible to consume. I make tomato mozzerella salad, put them in my caesar salad, sprinkle them up with sugar and eat them, make tomato soup, put them in my spaghetti, give them out in bucket loads to my neighbors, BUT THEYRE NOT GOING AWAY.

In fact, our wonderful garden is providing more and more on a daily basis.

just wonderful.

So my dad makes me think of a way to use up all these tomatos;  I decided to make some homemade tomato sauce and preserve them in jars.

Here's what I did:

Boil enough water to submerge the tomatoes

Wash the tomatoes

Score the flower-budding ends with Xs

prepare an ice-water bath

Once the water is boiling add in the scored tomatoes and continue boiling for about 2-3 minutes until skin starts to break and peel open on its own

Pour the tomatoes into the ice bath

The peeling part should be easy. The skin comes right off.

They remind me of human muscles when you peel the skin off.

LOOK AT ALL THAT SKIN

Dump those naked tomatoes into a pot.

Watch it slowly melt in pain. Cook unlided for about twenty minutes or until the water is reduced and the sauce is thick. Add diced onions, basil leaves, salt, and a bit of oregano.

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Clean out glass jars and cook them, and the lids, so the bacteria die in agony.

Then with tongs, or your bare hands if you want to be burned, take them out and the water should quickly evaporate off and dry.

After pouring the sauce into the jars (make sure you use a spoon to scoop it in, DO NOT POUR STRAIGHT FROM THE POT, TRUST ME I TRIED IT), secure the lid and cook the jar for about 2 minutes until the water is boiling again. And yes, I used a pickle jar. 

Store the sauce up to a year if frozen or refridgerate for 2-3 months.
Use it in lasagna and spaghetti recipes, to top vegetables, and to make tomato sauce flavored ice cream. I'm not even joking my dad tried doing that, he mixed diced tomatos with vanilla ice cream and added some of my sauce, and made me try some. It had this weird, tangy sweet and salty flavor.

Photo Credits to Me! 

  Kate Zoe Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved.