Summer is beginning to make a graceful exit here in New England with some cooler temps and sunny days (which we have been lacking for most of the summer.) I’ve been away from Italyville for a while for several reasons that have kept me busy, busy, busy!  I’ll let you choose the best reason:

A – I was away for work August 26-Sept 4th… and was in Houston, Chicago, Las Vegas and LA during that time.

B – I’m getting ready for another work trip to Miami and Atlanta next week.

C – I’m getting married at the end of the month… friends and family start arriving from all over soon and it seems like the planning never ends!

What do you think?  Busy schedule?  Not to mention that we have been trying to get our tomatoes so we can jar our sauce for the year.  The tomato situation doesn’t look good here in New England because of a tomato blight that has affected many of the local farmers.  We actually visited a local PYO (pick-your-own) farm yesterday and there wasn’t much to pick, so we’re looking into other farms in our area… keep your fingers crossed.  A great site to find local PYO farms in your area is pickyourown.org The site lists farms all over the country that offer PYO fruits & vegetables.

I wish we had these beauties from last year.

I got an email from Johnny Tomatoes yesterday who was jarring some sauce… so I know I need to hustle to get ours done soon, otherwise we go the canned route for the year! You know how I feel about that.  If your planning on jarring tomato sauce this year, here’s a link to last years post when we made our sauce to give you an idea on how we do it.  I’ll start posting more soon.  Til then…

This past Saturday, we made our tomato sauce for the year. We used to be able to make all our tomato sauce from tomatoes we grew in our own garden but times are changing and the garden isn’t as big as it used to be. Not a Problem! Do you think we would buy it at the grocery store? NEVER! It’s still doable. This years tomato crop here in New England took a serious hit from all the rain and finding Roma/Plum tomatoes has been difficult and expensive. The local farm we usually buy them from didn’t have any but after a little research, I found a great website called pickyourown.org that lists farms by state where you can…. you guessed it, pick your own fruits and vegetables. After about 10 phone calls with no success and venturing further and further from home, I came across a farm in Avon, CT that had Plum tomatoes and we were off to pick em! We picked 5 bushels and got together to make sauce. Interested in giving it a try??

What You’ll Need:
-Tomatoes: Cost – $15-20 per bushel ($10 last year!) if you pick your own, more if you get them pre-picked. I’m sure the cost varies from farm to farm and certainly from year to year, so shop around if you can.
-Tomato Sauce Machine
-Large pots, buckets, containers
-Large wooden spoon
-Sharp knives
-Jars, jar tops
-Basil (optional)
-Stove or propane burner

We like to pick our own tomatoes, so that we can select the ripest and best ones. Why leave it up to someone else? Our family has always used Plum or Roma tomatoes to make our tomato sauce because they have less water content. Less water = thicker sauce. As I mentioned, this year we picked 5 bushels (give or take) of tomatoes and they yielded about 80 quart size jars of tomato sauce.

Here’s a brief step by step of how to make your own homemade tomato sauce.

1- Select the ripest tomatoes: We recommend Plum/Roma tomatoes. They can usually be found at a local farm in your area. In our experience one bushel of plum tomatoes will make 15-ish quart size jars of tomato sauce.

2- If your tomatoes need to ripen a little, lay them out for a few days. We usually lay them flat on a tarp or a blanket in the garage or shed.
3- Call the family over, friends… whoever likes to show up when you’re making pasta on Sundays. Use the, “no work, no eat” phrase that my dad likes to use whenever one of these occasions presents itself.

4- Wash the tomatoes in a large container to get rid of any dirt, etc. Basically fill the container with water and dump in your tomatoes for a quick bath.
5- Once you’ve washed the tomatoes, cut the top piece off… not too much, just the little round dot on the top of the tomato (not sure what it’s called in English but codicino in Calabrese) and slice the tomato down the center the long way. You don’t need to cut them in half, just slice them so that they open up. Some people like to squeeze some juice out of the tomatoes after they slice them but we don’t do that anymore. It all depends on the type of tomatoes you’re using. The round tomatoes like Beefsteak, Jet Stars, etc. have higher water content, so it might be a good idea to give them a squeeze if that’s the variety you’re using.

6- Place your washed, sliced tomatoes in a large pot (see below) and cook them for approx 20-30 minutes at high heat, stirring occasionally. You’ll know they’re ready when they start getting soupy and you can pinch the skin off the tomatoes (don’t burn yourself trying). We find that it’s easier and quicker to cook the tomatoes on a propane burner. It speeds up cooking time, you can use larger pots and you can do it outside or in the garage/shed, which makes cleaning up easier.

7- Now that you’ve cooked the tomatoes, you’re ready to put them through your sauce maker. You can buy a sauce maker online or at a local kitchenware store. There are manual and automatic ones depending on your preference and price point. They can run from $40 for a manual one to $200+ for an electric one. We use a manual one…. My dad says the sauce tastes better when you work harder. Which is code for, “I’m not paying for an electric one, so shut up and turn the handle.”
8- Scoop the stewed tomatoes into the machine and crank the handle. We usually scoop some of the water out so that the sauce is thicker. The sauce will come out one end and the skins out the other. Make sure you have containers to collect both. Once you have processed the tomatoes, put the skins through for a second time. The sauce from the second round is thicker because there’s less water. We usually put the skins through a third time as well but you don’t have to.

9- Now that you have your sauce you need to fill your jars. The sauce machine usually comes with a funnel that fits standard jars to make things easier, otherwise you should buy a funnel… or you’ll make a mess. We grow a lot of basil, so we like to place a few leaves in each jar for taste but it’s not necessary. Scoop your sauce with a cup or mug and fill your jars a few inches from the top. Don’t fill the jars too high, we’ve found that when we fill the jars too high some of them go bad (not sure why.)

10- Once you’ve filled your jars, cap them with jar tops (you can finds jars and tops at any hardware store.)

11- When you’ve finished jarring, you’ll need to boil your jars of sauce to seal them. Place the jars in a large pot and fill the pot with water so that all the jars are submerged. Bring the water to a boil and boil the jars for about 20-30 minutes. Again, we like to use the propane burner (seen below) because it’s faster and we can use a larger pot. The pot below holds about 20 jars.

12- After boiling the jars, remove them and cover them with a blanket. We lay one blanket down and cover the jars with another blanket so that the jars don’t cool too quickly and crack. You can leave them overnight.

This sauce has no preservatives or additives. You can’t find this quality of tomato sauce in a grocery store. You’ll still have to cook it, add spices, meat, etc. but you’ll have fresh, homemade tomato sauce made from local ripe tomatoes for the entire year. Open a jar, make it the way you like it and Buon appetito!!