Marinara Sauce

Marinara Sauce

So far, we've had 2 more large batches of tomatoes come from the garden.  With those my dad and I tried our hand at marinara sauce.  I honestly didn't expect it to turn out that well.  I had tried to make my own tomato sauce one time in college and it was interesting to say the least.  I think my old roomie Erin can vouch for that one.  (Hi Erin!)  So with my expectations low, but my enthusiasm high, we un-boxed the Squeezo-Strainer.  I'm not kidding, that's really what it's called.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but I was assured that this was the same contraption that my parents used to make our baby food.  What can I say, they were (are) a couple of back to nature hippies.  (Gotta love them!)

There's no recipe because there's no way I was going to stop and measure all of the tomatoes that went into the sauce so you'll have to experiment with measurements on your own.  Here we go-

As with the Sun Dried Tomatoes below, start off with a whole bunch of ripe, washed and de-stemed tomatoes. 

Then start to process them through a food mill.  You may want to cut them in half to make it easier to grind.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, the Squeezo-Strainer!

In a large stock or pasta pot, saute 1-2 finely diced onions in about 1/4-1/2 cup olive oil, until translucent, bordering on carmelized.

If your going to peel and mince your garlic by hand, add about a head of it in now and cook with the onions for a few minutes.  Or you can do like I did and cut them in half (with skins and all) and send them through the food mill.  The mill will pulverize the garlic and remove the skins.  At this point you can start adding your tomato sauce, pulverized garlic, salt, pepper and herbs.  I used some oregano, thyme and italian parsley that I dried from my garden, but you can make it easy on yourself and just add some italian seasoning.

You may be tempted to check for seasoning now, like I made the mistake of doing (I hate raw tomatoes), but error on the side of less seasoning and wait to check for final seasoning until it's cooked down by almost half.  The flavors will concentrate and the flavor of the tomato will have changed as well.  The final product will be thick like your favorite jarred tomato sauce.  You can can the sauce with the traditional canning method, or you can put it into freezer bags, remove the air, and store in the freezer for months.  I have no canning experience, yet, so I chose the freezer option.  Enjoy!