Using many tomatoes that we grew in our garden, and adding some we bought at the local farm stand, my sister and I gathered together what we needed to make tomato sauce to freeze for the coming winter. We had fresh herbs from our gardens, garlic and peppers we grew ourselves, and some zucchini we threw in, too.
It took an hour or so of cutting and chopping to fill up two 18 quart cookers. We let it all simmer while we went to the Windsor Fair. Then we stirred them up and let them cook more while we went for a swim. After things were mushy we pureed it all then poured the sauce back into the cookers. Next we added herbs, salt, pepper and other things. We let the sauce cook for hours while we prepared and ate lobster dinner. More stirring, more cooking while we cleaned up. Finally at bed time the sauce was thick and fragrant and delicious. We let it cool over night and this morning tucked 23 quart bags of the flavor of summer into the freezer. The memories we made will be stored somewhere else.
If you want to make this yourself, the recipe follows:
We used 18 quart cookers made by Oster/Sunbeam. They are under $30 at places like Target.
This is 1/2 recipe, which will fill 1 cooker.
1/2 bushel tomatoes, cored, not peeled, cut in half if large
2 hot peppers
2 sweet peppers
6 onions
1 head garlic
1/2 c. olive oil
Chunk up vegetables and put all ingredients into the cooker. Cook hot, (400) for several hours, stirring occasionally, until soft. Cool enough so you can handle, then put into food processor or blender in batches until smooth. Put sauce back into the cooker and add:
1/2 c. olive oil
1/8 c. oregano
basil to taste
1/2 c. sugar
4 sm. cans tomato paste
1/4 c salt
1/8 c pepper
(you an add more seasonings to taste)
Cool, ladle into freezer bags. Enjoy!
