Sauce from Fresh Garden Tomatoes Recipe
Before we were even married, my now husband and I used to dream about the life we wanted to live. At the forefront of that dream, for me, was a cozy home full of pillows and blankets and a large garden where I could pick tomatoes to make sauce. This weekend, it all finally came full circle. The garden he built me for Mother’s Day has been exploding with tomatoes and the Romas were finally ripe enough this weekend to harvest some for a sauce. This Fresh Sauce was thick, rich, sweet and everything I’d ever hoped it would be.
This was our first year with a Kitchen Garden, and as lost as I was, the one thing I was sure about, was the type of tomato plants I wanted. While I love biting into a juicy beefsteak tomato on a sourdough sandwich, this year, my only objective was Sauce. Romas were on the top of my list when it came to planting, and these two plants MORE than delivered. In fact, they overgrew their cages and took over about half the raised bed. Next year, the plan is to move these tomato monsters into their own bed (and prune them – whoops!).
I was hoping to harvest enough of these little ruby colored babies to make two pizza pies on the grill using my Two Ingredient Pizza Dough. (if you haven’t tried this recipe, you’re REALLY missing out!) I pulled 28 fat and happy Romas out of the garden and had just enough to cover both pies.
The recipe I went with was a bit of a hybrid of multiple ones I’d read leading up to the big sauce day. I decided I wanted to roast the little maters with some garlic and fresh basil (also from the garden – yay!) before I mashed and pureed to get a rich flavor. Since Roma Tomatoes are a “Paste” variety, you can expect a thick and hearty sauce that you can water down to your desired consistency.
In total, it took about three hours to harvest, peel, roast, and prep the sauce, so prepare accordingly. You could always run to the farmers market in the morning to prepare a rich hearty sauce for dinner. You could also make this sauce the day before, pop it in the fridge, and warm it up the next day for pasta or pizza. When we go to do a big harvest, I plan to follow the same recipe and then freeze the paste into separate servings that can be cooked down with wine or water for a sauce.
We used this to make two pizzas and I wasn’t even able to get pictures of the finished pies before they were demolished! This sauce was so sweet, so rich, and so decadent – it hit every nail on the head for me, and my Italian Father In Law said it smelled like his Grandmother’s Kitchen. If that doesn’t make me an honorary Italian, I don’t know what will.
I can’t wait to use this again in a pasta dish and am anxiously getting ready for my next tomato harvest. Make sure you tag me in your Italian Masterpieces and let me know what you think!
Sauce from Fresh Garden Tomatoes Recipe
Course: Dinner, Family, Healthy, home made, Pizza, Recipe, TastyDifficulty: EasyServings
4
servingsPrep time
1
hour30
minutesCooking time
40
minutesIngredients
30 Roma Tomatoes
Fresh Basil
8-10 Garlic Cloves
Olive Oil
Red Wine or Water (for cooking)
Directions
- Peel your Tomatoes. I found this GREAT hack to quickly blanch and peel off all tomato skins. Blanching the tomatoes also helps preserve the texture and color which is great if you plan on freezing any of your sauce. My Italian Father in law gave me a family secret/tip while we were completing this step. He told me when he was a child, his job during sauce making was to take the tomato peels and bury them back into the garden. Not only is it good for the soil, but, it’s meant to bring good luck for your next batch of sauce!
- Slice your peeled tomatoes into halves and lay them out on two baking sheets. Add in 4-5 sliced garlic cloves and some fresh basil leaves to each pan.
- Top the entire baking sheets in a generous douse of Olive Oil. Toss everything together lightly to make sure they’re all covered.
- Bake in a 400℉ oven for 30-45 minutes; halfway through, rotate your pans and give them a good shake to ensure nothing is sticking.
- Transfer everything to a large stockpot and smash with a potato smasher. If there are any crispy bits that but a bit overdone, it’s totally okay! Just toss them in and mix them up. They’ll add to the roasted flavor.
- Dump your smashed tomato bits into a food processor or use an immersion blender to puree your sauce/paste to your preferred smoothness. I wanted mine to maintain some of the chunkiness of the tomato, so, I only gently processed it.
- At this point, you could squeeze out some of the excess moisture with a cheese cloth and freeze your paste into individual servings, or, you can move the puree into a saucepan and begin adding in your red wine or water to get the sauce to your ideal consistency.