Easiest, Thickest PASTA SAUCE from the Garden!! Canning Your Homegrown Pasta Sauce

hi everybody welcome back to living traditions homestead well it is an exciting part of the year the time of year when the harvest from the garden starts coming into the house and we can start preserving it and all the different ways that we love to preserve our harvest so that we can eat that freshly harvested and home-grown produce for the rest of the year today i am going to be starting a nice sized batch of pasta sauce now i have done quite a few videos on youtube for well lots of tomato recipes i have never done pasta sauce i've just done tomato sauce and that's mainly because tomato sauce is an easy base i can use it for anything that calls for a tomato product and then i can season it later i don't have to worry about jars in my pantry that are just dedicated to pasta sauce but this year i want to mix it up a little bit and i want to can some pasta sauce and i want to show you really how easy it is now this year i'm also going to be using a process that i have found to be the fastest and the easiest way to make tomato sauce and today pasta sauce so i can't wait to share it with you there are a couple of shortcuts that i think that you are going to appreciate i have quite a bit of tomatoes to get started today not as large as some of the other harvests in previous years because honestly this year our garden is struggling a little bit because of the heat and the drought but i am going to make the most of what we can get out of the garden and today like i said is pasta sauce you can see the tomatoes that i have washed and prepared for today i'm actually going to be using a combination of paste tomatoes and slicing tomatoes today i'm not in the position this year to be picky about the kind of tomatoes that i turn into pasta sauce and so we're going to be using both slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes now there's a big difference between the two types of tomatoes a slicing tomato is the standard type of tomato you know round tomato that you get in the grocery store that you would chop up and use you know in a salad or on top of your tacos or something like that and a paste tomato is more like the roma tomatoes that you see in the grocery store okay so there's a first of all there's a difference in the shape but the biggest difference is that a slicing tomato is very juicy on the inside there's lots of water on the inside of a slicing tomato and a paste tomato is much more dry so the pulp is not very juicy the reason why you generally use paste tomatoes for sauces is that you don't need to boil it down or cook it as long to get that nice thick dense sauce texture whereas having the slicing tomatoes in there it's going to take a little bit longer but i am going to be using both today and it's going to end up being fine now the tomatoes that i'm using today they're also not perfect they have some blemishes there are some that have cracked because we got some rain after a long time of not having any so there was more moisture in the soil than just when we use our drip irrigation system so that's no problem any blemishes are going to be removed and we'll give those parts to the pigs and then the good parts we'll put in my pot here i'm going to be using my 18 quart roaster which is going to be a fantastic way to cook these tomatoes down the brand that i recommend is the nesco brand 18 quart roaster i do have one saved in our amazon shop if you want to take a look and the reason why i recommend that brand the nesco brand is some of the cheaper brands the knockoff brands the inside of these inserts the finish has been coming off when some people do tomatoes and then it's incorporated into their tomatoes so the the oster brand has not done that for me i have one roaster that i've used for probably 12 years and i also have a newer one and both of them are doing great so there are just two things that i'm going to be doing with these tomatoes before i put them in my roasting pan i'm going to remove the core of the tomatoes with a tomato corer tool i know it's hard to see from here but this is so handy it's a little scooper with teeth on it that just gets through the core and you can pop that right out and then you don't have to worry about that anymore we're going to give that part to the pigs and if there are no other spots on here that need to be removed i'm just going to quarter these tomatoes and put them seeds and skin and everything right into my roaster pan we're going to do that with all of these tomatoes this tomato has a split so i'm going to remove that split portion quarter them and get them in my pot here's this tool that i was telling you about this tomato corer it has little teeth on it there's the core of that look how easy that is there aren't many blemishes on this one actually none that i need to cut out so i'm just going to quarter this and put it in my roasting pan [Music] so [Music] all of the tomatoes are cut up lots of tomatoes in there okay so we need to start cooking these down we want the tomatoes to get all super hot and mushy and uh the juice to start evaporating so i'm gonna keep it covered for right now so that it can heat up faster and then once it's heated up we'll do a bunch of stirring and then we'll take the lid off so that the water in the tomatoes can start evaporating i think it goes without saying that the roaster is a fantastic way to cook down a large volume of tomatoes at one time but what if you don't have a large volume of tomatoes but you still want to make some pasta sauce and can that i'm going to show you my favorite way to cook down and process tomatoes into tomato sauce or pasta sauce when i only have a smaller amount of tomatoes an amount that definitely would not fill up an entire 18 quart roaster now a few days ago i had some tomatoes that i needed to do something with it was getting to the point where if i waited too much longer they would be going bad and so i decided to start some tomato sauce which i'm going to turn into pasta sauce i didn't have a large amount so what i did was i cut them up in the exact same way that i just showed you and i threw them in a big pot now one of the biggest challenges that us canners have with making sauce tomato sauce is to get the sauce to be as thick as possible without burning or without it ending up being too watery there's just really a sweet spot that makes a perfect sauce after it's canned and when you take it out of the pantry to use it for your spaghetti or whatever it is that you're gonna do on the day that i started this sauce i knew that i wouldn't have time to can it that day so i let it cool down and i put it in the refrigerator for three days that's really the maximum that you want to have tomato sauce in the refrigerator before canning it i had it to the point where it was it was almost ready to blend up which is what we're going to do and can but it could still use probably about 30 minutes of boiling down time i want to show you what it looks like in the pot when it's almost ready to blend up and turn into sauce now hopefully you can see in the pot that on the top of this sauce it's still kind of watery on top but when you stir around in there there's really a lot of nice pulp you can see the seeds and the skin but there's still a little bit of watery tomato juice on the top and that's really what i'm trying to boil out of this sauce now i don't have it on a very high heat because i don't want it to burn on the bottom of the pot so i am going to let this continue to cook down for probably 30 more minutes and then i will show you how i'm gonna blend this up and then how we're gonna can this tomato sauce as pasta sauce when i was first starting the sauce i also made the conscious decision not to boil it down so much and blend it before i put it in the refrigerator i have found that if you blend the sauce and then put it in the refrigerator when you bring it back out of the refrigerator to heat it up oftentimes it will burn easier on the bottom of your pot as a sauce burst is still you know kind of in its tomato pulp with the skins and the seeds in it if you haven't blended it yet it won't burn as badly when you warm it back up for canning so i'm just going to let this boil down for about 30 more minutes to see if we can really get some of this last water that's just hanging around on the top of our sauce to evaporate in the meantime let's check on the tomatoes that we put in the roaster now the tomatoes look pretty much the same but underneath it is starting to heat up and the tomatoes are starting to break down and soften they are doing exactly what they should be doing but because it's such a large volume it's going to take quite a bit of time for them to break down into a sauce like we have in our stockpot on the stove while we're waiting for the tomato sauce to cook down just a little bit more i'm going to start getting the spices ready that we're going to be adding to our tomato sauce to turn it into pasta sauce i'm going to be making an italian seasoning mix that then i can use to add a certain amount to each jar that will turn it into an amazing pasta sauce our italian seasoning that we like in our pasta sauce is oregano thyme and basil and so first i'm just going to make i'm just gonna make up a bunch of that seasoning mix i'm using one tablespoon of oregano one tablespoon of thyme now this is dried these are dried herbs and one tablespoon of basil so equal parts basil oregano and thyme now you guys when i cannot grow all of my own herbs i buy them in bulk from azure standard because i love having a large amount of herbs on hand so that i don't feel badly when i use a large quantity of them so if you like to do that as well make sure you check out azure standard online and they have good prices and you can buy things in bulk so i have that mixture in my jar here i'm just going to mix it up and i'm going to start adding a half a teaspoon of this mixture into every jar that we are going to be canning today now my water bath canner holds 12 pint jars and i'm going to be using pint jars today because it's just the most common that we use for tomato sauce we might not quite have 12 jars worth of the tomato sauce in my stockpot here i am going to prepare all of these jars because later on i'll have more tomato sauce to can into pasta sauce from my roaster so each one of these jars i'm going to add a one-half teaspoon of our italian seasoning mix and then i'm also going to add one quarter teaspoon of citric acid to each jar i'm doing that to increase the acidity level of the tomato sauce the pasta sauce that we're going to be canning i am using water bath canning method for this tomato sauce tomato sauce and tomato products are one of those items that you can either water bath can or pressure can depending on your preference and you know in some cases depending on my mood and this time i'm going to be using water bath canning so with water bath canning your products your ingredients that you're going to put into your jars they need to be on the acidic side in order for them to be water bath canned so in order to ensure that our tomato sauce our pasta sauce is acidic enough to be water bath canned we're going to add some citric acid we're going to be adding one quarter of a teaspoon of citric acid to every jar now if you don't have citric acid or you don't like to use citric acid you could instead used bottled lemon juice it can't be just squeezed lemon because the acid level needs to be a consistent level lemons fresh lemons aren't always a consistent acidity level but bottled lemon juice is and in that case you would add one tablespoon of lemon juice to each of these pint-sized jars now if you're canning quart jars you would use a half a teaspoon of citric acid or two tablespoons of lemon juice bottled lemon juice i'm not going to be adding salt to any of these jars that's really a preference thing i tend to salt my items as i'm cooking rather than salting them in the jars if you wanted to add salt to your jars ahead of time you could add one half teaspoon per pint jar these jars are all set and i do have my water bath canner started on the stove getting that hot it often takes a long time so i like to do that ahead of time okay i've called it this sauce is ready to be blended up and canned i just wanted to show you that there's very little liquid on top there and when i stir it you can see just how much of the tomato pulp and stuff is in there so in my opinion this is ready to be blended up and it's going to be a nice thick sauce now i am going to be using a vitamix blender to blend this up because i find that it just does an absolutely fantastic job blending up the skins and the seeds definitely pulverizing them into like absolutely nothing you can't even tell that they are in there i also feel like the added skins and seeds bulk up the sauce and kind of plump it up make it thicker and the other thing that i've noticed is that if i leave the seeds and the skin in but blend them up using a vitamix they don't bother my digestion in previous years i have taken off all of the skins i've tried my hardest to get the seeds out because leaving those in those things in for me gives me indigestion just hurts my tummy so badly but since i've been blending them up with vitamix i haven't had that problem and it really saves me a lot of time to not have to take the skins off of the tomatoes and to try to get all of the the seeds out even with a food mill you guys i i just i just have never been successful using that food mill it's tiring and it's time consuming and so this process is really my go-to process now for making tomato sauce and pasta sauce i'm just going to use a ladle and ladle the hot sauce into the blender the vitamix another nice thing about this vitamix is that it holds a lot this holds eight cups of liquid that you can blend up all at once and sometimes with other blenders and with food processors you can't put very much liquid inside of it but the vitamix you can put a lot of liquid in at one time blend a lot at once [Music] so [Music] [Music] so this is all set here pour this in with the other tomato sauce that i blended up that is super piping hot so i'm going to just get the rest of the things ready that i need to can to get the jars filled and put it in the canner and then we'll be all set to get started canning okay let's get started canning our pasta sauce now when we're filling our jars these pint-sized jars well any size jars for tomato sauce you'll want to fill them up to one-half inch to the top of the jar so you'll have one half inch of headspace in there this is a really nice and thick tomato sauce it turned out so well let me check that headspace it is exactly half inch it's like i know what i'm doing these days after all these years of canning i'm using a chopstick here to swirl around in there and get any air bubbles out then i'm going to take a damp rag and i'm going to clean the rim of the jar and i'm going to put on there a new a brand new clean lid and a ring screw that on there and then i'm going to use a jar lifter to put that right in my water bath canner now i do not use the wire rack inside of my water bath canner that comes with it i can fit a lot more jars in there when i don't use that rack but i do have kind of a silicone mat on the bottom you can get those from ball the ball company and that is what i'm using to make sure that the jars don't sit right down on the um right down on the metal of the canner now just recently i've been starting to use that silicone mat on there prior to that i never used anything on the bottom i just put the jars right on on the canner bottom and i never had any problems with jars cracking or anything but i have heard from many of you that i should use something on the bottom so even though i haven't had any trouble i did take your advice and i'm starting to use one of those mats on the bottom okay we're gonna do another jar here and we're gonna fill it up until it's one half of an inch to the top of the jar half inch headspace i'm going to swirl around to get any bubbles out wipe off the rim put on a lid and a ring and put that right in the canner so this batch made five pints of pasta sauce we're gonna put the lid on top of there turn on our heat now we are gonna let this water come back up to a boil once it's boiling we're going to set a timer now for pint-sized jars you'll process them for 35 minutes but because of our altitude i need to add five more minutes so i'll be processing these for 40 minutes once the timer goes off i will turn off the heat take off the lid and let them sit in there for five minutes and just have them calm down we're doing that to just allow the the pressure and the heat kind of calm down inside each of the jars to prevent that tomato sauce from rushing out of the top it's called siphoning so we're going to prevent siphoning by just gently letting them sit in the water without the heat on without the the lid on before we take them out while we're waiting let's check on the tomatoes that are in my roaster now you can see that they have definitely softened quite a bit you can see how much liquid is in there a lot of that is due to those slicing tomatoes that i was telling you about so now that they're hot and you can see the steam is rising off of them i'm going to keep the lid off now i'm going to let this evaporate let this moisture and this water boil out and thicken [Music] you guys those are my secrets for making quick easy thick homemade home-grown pasta sauce you guys if you're enjoying videos like this make sure to hit the subscribe button below and remember that the best way that you can help us here on the homestead is just to share our videos on your social media until next time thank you so much for stopping by our homestead take care and god bless

Channel: Living Traditions Homestead

Views: 328,764

Keywords: Living Traditions Homestead, Missouri, Ozark's, homesteading, Ozarks, self-sufficient, homesteaders, unjobbing, canning pasta sauce, homemade pasta sauce, homegrown pasta sauce, waterbacth canned pasta sauce, quick pasta sauce, easy pasta sauce, thick pasta sauce, how to can pasta sauce

Id: BA7tcIr_Wb0

Length: 24min 11sec (1451 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 06 2022