Tomato Sauce – A Creation Story

This past weekend, I decided to make some tomato sauce from scratch. I have done it a couple of times before, but I still required some phone consultations from my mother. I love my tomato sauce and always treasure it all year long. I also believe true sustainability relies on preservation of food, which is a skill that we are rapidly losing.  Luckily, I have a mom who still cans food and knows lots of the tricks, so I get most of my canning advise from my mother. For the tomato sauce recipe and techniques, I also used my favorite Italian cookbook “Make It Italian”.

There are two ways for canning. The first is water canning, which is were you just boil the jars in boiling water. This is appropriate for high acidity products such as tomatoes with added acid and most fruits. The second is pressure cooking, which cooks the food at much higher temperatures, which is required for most vegetables. There are also lots of great canning books out there that will walk you through this process such as “Preserving Summer’s Bounty”. I recommend using a cookbook to make sure that you are doing everything safely.

So below was my process for making the tomato sauce:
1. Gather the supplies
Investment purchases:
Water Bath Canner – $19 on Amazon
A Canning Accessories kit, including a couple of extra items is available for $12 on Amazon with at least the following items – jar lifter, funnel and tongs
Mason Jars – I needed 19 pints for this particular batch – $10.89 per dozen
Total initial investment: $52.78
Once you buy these,  you can reuse them over and over again. My mom lent me her Water Bath Canner and accessories, and I already owned the mason jars, so my only cost for the tomato sauce is below.

Tomato Sauce specific purchases:
35 lbs of Tomatoes (more details below) – $35
New lids (if you already own the mason jars) – $7
Bag of Ice – $1.50
Total: $43.50

Top Left: Organic Paste Tomatoes, Top Right: "Seconds", Bottom: heirloom "thirds"

The tomatoes are obviously the most important part of this process. In late august through late September, all of the tomatoes get ripe.  During this time, the tomatoes are at the best for pricing, flavor and availability. My mother runs the Carnation Farmers Market on Tuesdays so she picked up 35 lbs of tomatoes from Kittitas Farms, one of the best tomato vendor in the area. She bought 15 lbs of “seconds”, 10 lbs of organic paste tomatoes and then 10lbs of heirlooms. The “seconds” are tomatoes that are a bit past their prime and don’t look very pretty. During peak season, you can typically get these for $1 a pound. The paste tomatoes are great for making the sauce thick and she got them for $2 a pound. The heirlooms were free because they were closer to being “thirds” than “seconds” and were on their way to the compost.

My set up from top to bottom: Unpeeled tomatoes, boiling water, Ice bath, Peeling bowl and knive, peeled tomatoes

2. Skin the tomatoes
So on Friday night, I got to work. It took me about 3 hours from start to finish to get the tomatoes into the pot. Here is the set up and process:

This is harder than it sounds. So the way to do this is to take a big pot of water and get it to boiling. You also need a big bowl of ice water and some extra ice on hand for later. You drop the tomatoes into the boiling water for 15 seconds and then drop them into the ice bath.

You then take the tomatoes out of the ice bath and the skin will either already be peeling off or you take a knife and give it a small slice. You can peel it from there. If it isn’t peeling easily, put it back in the boiling water for another 15 seconds.

Peeling the tomatoes

3. Cut, seed and get the tomatoes in the pot

Get your pots ready. I had one large stainless steel pot and then a large enameled cast iron pot. I found that the sauce in the cast iron turned out better than the stainless steel one, so next time I will just use all of my smaller cast iron pots together.  Since we are doing a water bath only, don’t use anything else in this sauce like garlic, onions etc. If you want to do this you will need a pressure cooker or need to freeze the sauce. You can use olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt or sugar.

Start cutting up the tomatoes. At first, I started out trying to take the seeds out, but after about half of them I gave up. It was a lot of work, and I was still getting lots of seeds into the pot. So I just started chopping them up and getting them straight into the pot. This sped up the process considerably. I think this would probably reduce my time by at least thirty minutes next time.

4. Cook the Tomatoes

After they are in the pot, you cook them for a long time. You want to get it to a simmer, which means there are still bubbles coming up, but not rapidly. Generally this is on low to medium low depending on your stove and your pot. How long you cook the sauce is up to you. I find that my sauce doesn’t get to the right consistency for at least 24 hours. Before starting the canning process, taste it to see if you need to add any sugar, salt or red pepper flakes for flavor.

5. Take a break for a day or two and let them cook

6. Prepare the Canning Equipment

On Sunday, after I let it cook down, I got to getting the sauce into the jars. This process took about two hours. The first step is to prepare the canning equipment.

You will need all of the canning equipment listed above. You will also need red wine vinegar, lemon juice or citric acid, paper towels and a clean working space.

Sanitizing the Lids

Take the jars, lids and screw tops and wash them with soapy water. Then put them in the boiling water for at least 1 minute. Since you will be cooking the sauce in the water bath for 25 minutes, you will be getting the entire contents of the jar to the temperature that will make it safe.  Do only enough for each batch, most likely 6 at a time.

7. Fill the jars and get them into the water bath

Spooning the sauce into the jars

Take the funnel and put it on your first jar. Fill the jar almost to the top with only a half inch at the top. Take out the funnel and put it onto the next jar. Fill all of your jars for the first batch. Then put your acidic substance on the top of the sauce. Since tomatoes are right at the border of acidity for the water bath, for safety reasons it is a good idea to add some acid to the top of the jar. Red wine vinegar is what I used, but lemon juice or citric acid are also options. Next you want to clean the rims of the jars. If there is any sauce on the rim, it will make the sealing of the lids fail and you will have to redo it.

Adding red wine vinegar to the top of the filled jars

Now put the lids on. NEVER reuse lids… if you are reusing jars, you can reuse the screw-on rims, but you have to buy new lids. Put the rims on the jars. Don’t screw them on too tight, because air will need to escape in order to properly seal. Close it enough to secure the lid, but not all of the way. Then drop the jars into the boiling water bath and let it boil for 25 – 30 minutes.

Sauce in the Water Canner for 25 minutes

8. Remove from the water bath and store
After 25 to 30 minutes, remove the jars from the water bath. Your main goal is to get all of the jars to seal, which will keep them preserved. Don’t touch the tops for at least 10 minutes after taking them out of the water bath, because sometimes the seal happens after you take out the jars. You know that the jars are sealed if the tops don’t “pop” when you press down on them.  If some of your jars don’t seal, you can either use this sauce immediately and store in the fridge, or you can reboil them, which will require a new lid.

After all of the jars are done, leave them in one place without moving them or stacking them for 48 hours. After that time, you should store them in a cool dark place until you use them.

Right after I made the tomato sauce, I also made some huckleberry jam. It didn’t take any time at all (about an hour…) and was practically free because I picked the berries myself, used sugar in my pantry. The only expense was the jars.

Here is my bounty:

Fall Canning Bounty

Lessons learned for next year:

• Use as many enameled cast iron pots as possible, it cooks more evenly and is easier to keep at the proper simmer level
• Don’t bother with taking the seeds out, it just takes more time and you can’t actually get them all out. Use more red pepper flakes in the beginning (I like spicy sauce…)
• Get a sous chef –  an extra set of hands would have made this process a lot faster. Or go in with a partner, especially for the peeling and chopping part of the process
• Don’t be so afraid of screwing on the lids… the first batch, only half of them sealed because I was too afraid of them exploding… they were practically loose when I put them into the water bath.
• Don’t cook it for so long. I cooked it for a little too long, I would have been fine after 24 hours.

So after all of this I spent $43.50 and 5 hours of actual work and got 18 jars of tomato sauce. So all in all, I probably spent an average of $2 and 15 minutes of time on each jar. While it may not be the most cost effective use of my money/time, I still find making and preserving my own tomato sauce incredibly valuable beyond the money. And every time I make something with it, it tastes better because of the hard work I put into it.

Tags: canning, food preservation, tomato sauce, water bath