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Freezing tomato sauce is money in winter's food bank. Nothing compares with a fresh summer tomato sauce. I like a sauce with the tomatoes coarsely chopped. I want to know that I’m eating tomatoes. The trick is to preserve the tomatoes into winter and to resurrect that sweet August taste. When I was a kid, we had a pantry closet in the basement. The shelves were lined with Ball jars and Mason jars filled with jellies, jams and tomatoes. We grew our own tomatoes, grapes and raspberries. I can still see the purple stained cheesecloth and taste the thick deep purple must from the grape jelly that my mother would skim into little bowls for us. Back then, they used to put a layer of wax in the top of the jar to keep out air. Preserving in a jar can be quite tricky. My mother still makes jams and jellies, but no one in the family jars tomato sauce any more. So, I decided that’s exactly what I wanted to do. Looking online I found a number of methods. None of them really appealed to me. Most crushed the entire tomato including skins and seed in a blender. I don’t think the blender method is a good idea. First, skins and seeds are not digestible and when ground they contribute bitterness. Second, if you are going to use fresh tomatoes, I think it’s to keep them full and chunky. You can always crush them down later to suit a specific recipe. Then too, all of the sites I found called for the addition of either lemon juice or citric acid to prevent possible botulism. This was certainly something to avoid. All in all, jarring the sauce did not seem like a good idea. Then I thought why not freeze the sauce? Of course, plastic containers in the freezer lack the charm of old time glass jars lined up handsomely on the shelf, but the more important thing is what’s inside.
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The tomato selection was the next step in the process. Since my plans called for a significant measure of frozen sauce it was worth crossing the river into New Jersey for a full box of fresh from the field tomatoes. The best variety of tomato for sauce is the Italian plum tomato. I bought a bushel of them. But, in the corner, was a basket of regular tomatoes marked as “seconds.” Perhaps they were seconds for salads, but they looked perfectly good for sauce. They were firm with no blemishes, although some had that funny rust finish. But the skin was coming off, so what did it matter? It’s these regular tomatoes that I’m showing here.
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What you need
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Equipment
2 Large pots for peeling tomatoes Spider Heavy bottom sauce pan Sharp knife |
Fresh picked summer tomatoes, plum or regular
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Boil water / Ice water
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Cut out stem
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Score the base
Lightly slice the skin in the bottom side of the tomato
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Blanche the tomatoes
Set the tomatoes in the boiling water for about two minutes. If you see the skin coming off before that, take them out.
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Ice bath
Put the tomatoes immediately into the ice water. In another two minutes they will cool.
Add more ice / change the ice block for the next batch. |
Peel
The skins will peel easily.
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Squeeze out the seeds
Cut the tomatoes in half at the equator. (It doesn't work the other way,)
Squeeze out the seeds. Use a paring knife to get the stubborn ones. |
Cube the tomatoes
Rough chop the tomatoes.
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Cooking
Cook the tomatoes in batches or in more than one pan. Add a bit of salt and some fresh basil.
I prefer not to add other seasonings at this point since I can add them fresh and according to the later recipe. |
Reduce the sauce
Cook on low heat for about an hour until the sauce thickens.
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Cool and ladle into freezer containers
