How to Avoid RUNNY Sauce! Easy Tomato Sauce Secrets

the tomato harvest is finally coming on and i have enough tomatoes to make my favorite and easiest way of a nice thick tomato sauce because nobody likes a water watery thin sauce but i'm also going to be sharing with you my favorite methods so that i am doing the least amount of hands on time or the least amount of work that you can get away with and still have a lovely home canned tomato sauce so the number one way to have a nice thick sauce is to start with a paste tomato i have a variety in here of both san marzano lungos as well as amish paste tomatoes roma are another option but you want to go with this pear-shaped type roma tomato because they have less water more flesh and the less water you have in the tomato means the least amount of time that you have to do simmering in order to get that nice thick sauce i also feel like the paste tomatoes give a wonderful flavor but whenever you are canning your sauce you have to remove the skins the skins harbor a higher bacterial load and all of our tested methods when we're canning already have the addition of acid because tomatoes are borderline despite whatever variety they may be there's a misconception or a myth that floats around that if it's a certain type of heirloom tomato that's acidic not true we need to be adding acid whenever we're canning and the amount of acid and the processing times that we have are based upon the skins removed if you leave the skins on you have a higher bacterial load and therefore the tested times that we have don't ensure that you have a safe product so we need to get these skins removed now you may be really clean in the kitchen i am not and my secret is to wear something red whenever you are canning tomato products or white one you won't see the red on red and if it's white at least i can bleach it out to remove any stains if need be so for the first method that we're going to be doing when we've got a bunch of fresh tomatoes that are coming on i prefer to roast these in the oven just long enough so that the skins easily separate so i'm going to go ahead and put this onto a high boil let that begin heating up and then we are going to prep these guys so what we want to do is we are going to core them and the great thing about using a paste tomato is these guys do not have the large core or a huge amount of seeds like you will find see a little tiny core barely anything there get them here to toss those into um hardly anything in there you always want to make sure that you are using diseased free tomatoes whenever we are canning i'm just going to go ahead and open those up and there's just this little tiny bit in the middle here that has the seed sac and a little bit more of the core so it's really simple there we go seeds are out and we're going to place that cut side down same thing with this other half so you can see you're just running your thumb basically through there really fast and easy we're going to get these trays filled up all right we've got our first trays done so we want to put these in to our oven i'm gonna set the timer for five minutes our goal is to just have them in there long enough for the skins to start to shrivel because then they will easily pull off so while that first batch is going we're gonna get started on our second batch of trays here and our tomatoes now in the past i've also got a written blog post that has the printable directions and recipes as far as how much acid per jar and processing times for you so that is in the video description you can click on over to that link but i have in the past where i have just put the tomatoes this is kind of the traditional way that you'll see in a lot of canning books where you will put your tomatoes into a pot overheat and you'll mash them up in a thin layer and then you take them off and then you put them through a food mill or a sieve or something like that in order to separate out the skins and the seeds i just find this to be and i have a sieve and a food mill but i have just found over the years personally this is the way that i have gravitated and kept doing the tomatoes and it's less of transferring um the hot liquid when it's from a hot pot yes these are hot oven trays but i don't know i just find it easier but there is one other thing that you can do that i want to show you and that is what i will do if i don't have a large amount of tomatoes that are ripe yet or if you really are in a spot where you do not want to heat up or turn on the oven but you are going to be simmering your sauce no matter what if you're using the paste tomatoes you're going to be simmering it less so you'll still be heating up that way and the kitchen but you may decide to do that outside and that is to freeze your tomatoes ahead of time so here i've got a couple of gallon bags this was the first batch of tomatoes that i had come on and you can see that there was not nearly enough to bother with doing here so i just tossed them as they came on right here into the bags until the majority came on now these are still thawing i've got some ice chunks uh here actually in the center but as these thaw you can see this is wrinkly here and as they thaw then the skins will just pull right off very very easily just as if you had blanched them i don't do this with all of my tomatoes simply because when they're all on i don't have that much freezer space so this one is all peeled and ready to go with the rest when i pull them out of the oven and those ones are peeled too okay so our timer just went off so we are going to take a peek and see if these guys are ready at that five minute mark get a hot pad [Music] oh yeah so this one is on the top and you can see i've got split skins and i've also got wrinkly skin so we just need to set this down so that until these are cool enough to handle and then they are going to be ready to go so these have been about just five minutes we basically just want them cool enough that they're not going to burn our fingers as we are pulling off our tomato skin so they're still a little bit hot and steamy but i can handle these without gloves so not a big issue now you can just throw away the tomato skins but you also can put them into a bowl and save them and you can either dehydrate them or freeze dry them and then you will have a tomato skin powder that you can add a little bit of water to or you can just add it to soups and stews as a thickener or an easy way to create tomato paste that is a safe way to preserve and put these skins to use so kind of up to you there now as i go through here i like to just throw my tomatoes out they've already been uh cored seeds removed and now the skin's removed and then i puree them up and then i put them in the pot to simmer now tomato sauce i don't ever make pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce that has other added stuff in it i do all of my tomatoes with the exception of salsa into a basic tomato sauce and the reason for that is because oh next batch [Music] oh let's go a couple more minutes not quite yet but the reason for that is because i have found that one it's just easier for me to do that and then when i want to make pizza i just pull out the tomato sauce simmer some onions and garlic and add a little bit of fresh herbs or dried herbs depending upon the time of year right directly into the sauce along with olive oil but you can't can with oil in it and i've also discovered that i feel like the flavor profile if i'm using my fresh onions and garlic i just think that the flavor profile is much more pronounced and is better if you've ever put herbs into something that you're cooking especially in like a slow cooker they really lose their flavor which is why you should only put them in right at the end and so i don't find it worth the extra work to do that when i'm making up sauce i prefer just to use it all fresh at that time and then if i really need a tomato paste i can just let it sit and simmer on the stove and thicken up just that small jar rather than doing a whole batch of tomato paste or a specific sauce recipe okay so we now have one tray in here so i'm going to blend this up and get an approximate quantity [Music] right at about four cups now this won't be the amount of finish sauce because we're going to thicken this up but i am going to put it in the pot over medium heat to begin getting that ready to a simmer so we can thicken it and pull my next batch out so while my very last tray of roasted tomatoes there is cooling off to handle here are the frozen and then thawed ones so i am going to cut the stem off of that one slip off the skin oh i didn't get it all the way through and then you're going to want to open this up to the center here you can see the core and our seed packet so we're going to take that out and put that in there so we just got the last of the tomatoes in here and we're going to let this simmer to make sure everything is heated all the way through and let it reduce a little bit but you guys it is already so thick that it's look at this look at how thick that is it really needs very little time to reduce because it's already super thick which is one of my absolute favorite things so while this is simmering and reducing just a little bit we're gonna go ahead and get our canner ready now you actually have two options when it comes to how you choose to process your tomato sauce so our sauce has simmered and reduced by about an inch in the pot and it is now time to fill our jars now you have two methods that you can safely process and can tomato sauce you can do it in a water bath canner or you can do it in your pressure canner i like to do it in the pressure canner because i don't have to process it for as long and i actually don't even have a water bath counter anymore i just use my steam canner but because if you're water bath canning tomato sauce it is a longer processing time and it goes over 30 minutes and a steam canner can only be used for water bath recipes that are 30 minutes or less simply because there's not enough volume of water for it to create steam and go beyond 30 minutes so i'm going to be pressure canning these jars instead now regardless if you are pressure canning this is something that a lot of people miss or don't necessarily realize the processing times for pressure canning tomato sauce are with added acid so if you're following any of the manuals that have recipes that come with your pressure canner or from any of our trusted sources like the ball book or if you're in my canning course um ball national center of home food preservation etc you will see that tomato sauce even with pressure canned that time is with the added acid to the jar the only time that you can can tomato without adding any acid with a pressure canner is when you're doing soup and that processing time is usually like 60 to 75 minutes whereas when we're pressure painting our sauce with our added acid we're only doing it for 15 minutes based upon your altitude now for specifics on your altitude and processing time processing time water bath and pressure canner is different go to that blog post that has the printable recipe card and grab that now when it comes to your acid choices there's actually three options the first is to use citric acid which is a white small amount of powder it's a specific amount per jar or bottled lemon juice from concentrate it needs to be from concentrate and it needs to be bottled because the acidity levels of lemons vary when they're fresh based upon lots of different factors bottled lemon juice from concentrate is a specific acidity so that when we're the recipes times have been calculated it's based upon the consistency and the acidity in the bottle of lemon juice so it needs to go into each jar your specific amount you can also use vinegar but you have to use a lot of vinegar it needs to be five percent vinegar and i choose not to use the vinegar because you have to use enough for it to be acidic enough that you can have a little bit of a aftertaste of that coming you don't taste the lemon juice and you don't taste the citric acid i'm going to be using lemon juice today now another mistake i see people make when they are filling their jars these have just come out of hot soapy water and then rinsed in really hot water they need to be sitting on a towel so that when i put this simmering boiling hot tomato sauce into the jar that i it's not in contact with a cold counter because their jars can crack you can have shermal thermal shock also because my lemon juice has been in the fridge i always put a little amount one ladle full of the tomato sauce in the jar and then i'm going to fill the jar with the proper amount of lemon juice if you put cold lemon juice in a jar that's been washed in really hot soapy water i've had a crack so lesson learned so this is for a quart jar we're going to be doing two tablespoons per jar of bottled lemon juice and then i'm going to be doing a teaspoon of salt and you can absolutely use whoops that's a little bit of a too much of a teaspoon there we go i can't realize i had my little pour open quite so much you can use canning salt you can also use redmon's real salt you just want to make sure that you are using salt that doesn't have iodine in it or anti-caking agents now we're going to continue filling this jar move it up a little bit so you can see a little bit on better camera angle there with the rest of our tomato sauce you can see how nice and thick that is now your head space is actually going to change if you are doing a water bath or if you're pressure canning this i'm pressure canning this so i'm going to be using the headspace for a pressure canner which is one inch like i said go and grab that recipe card if you're doing water bath because you do have a different head space for water bath versus pressure canning a lot of people don't realize that but you do so we want this to be a one inch head space so we're gonna measure not quite there add a little bit more and check okay right one inch head space this is a thick sauce so you still want to go through remove any type of air bubbles that may be present and then we're gonna recheck our head space and i'm right on wipe our rim clean and you only want to put this down to finger tip tight and then you want to put this into the preheated pressure canner you don't want to fill all of the jars and leave them sitting there and allow them to cool down this is a hot pack so as soon as this jar is filled it's going to go directly into the canner so i just had enough for a pint jar here three quarts and one pint which the great news about pressure canning your tomato sauce is it's the actually same processing time for both pints and quarts that's usually not the case but it is for this so we are going to go ahead and get these processed and then i'm going to show you a tip to help reduce siphoning which is when you have the product coming out of the jar so you've had it at the headspace when it went in and then when you're done canning you'll notice that there's a bunch of liquid loss that's called siphoning very common with syrups fruits and sauces so i've got a tip that will help you reduce that so you can probably hear it but we just let this vet for 10 minutes with steam coming out in a steady stream try to say that three times fast which means we are now ready to put on our pounds of pressure so if you are a thousand feet above sea level or lower you are going to be at 10 pounds of pressure and as soon as that comes up to pressure and starts jiggling we'll start start our timer which will be for 15 minutes we got that jiggle that means we are at our pounds of pressure so [Music] we'll start our primer okay two minutes is up i'm gonna turn that timer off and then i still recommend using hot pads because it's still hot so you're going to take your lid off the same way you put it on doing opposite or opposing wing nuts at the same time and then you always want to take this off and use it as a shield to block any of this hot steam that's coming out and then this is where people have siphoning happen is they try to take the jars out much too soon so you want to set your timer when they're coming out of a pressure canner for 10 minutes with the lid off before we remove them okay now our 10 minutes is up and now we are going to be taking out our jars always always make sure especially at this point that you have got a towel and it is least doubled over before you set your hot jars that are coming out of this pressure canner onto the countertop for more tips on reducing siphoning and if you do have siphoning happening when is it still safe and when is it not safe to store the jars make sure that you check out this podcast and blog post episode

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 34,972

Rating: 4.9391456 out of 5

Keywords: tomato sauce, pasta sauce, tomato sauce recipe, how to make tomato sauce, homemade tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, pizza sauce, marinara sauce, italian tomato sauce, tomato sauce pasta, tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce pasta recipe, tomato sauce from scratch, tomato sauce for spaghetti, tomato sauce making, pasta sauce from fresh tomatoes, pasta sauce recipe easy, tomato sauce recipe fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce recipe easy, tomato sauce recipe without vinegar

Id: or_YwwmSPEg

Length: 19min 22sec (1162 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021