I started making this roasted tomato sauce years ago when my gardening skills had improved and I was having an abundance of tomatoes every year. I would always freeze tomatoes roasted with garlic, to be able to savor that summer flavor in winter, but struggled with making sauce. The course I had taken in canning had me seriously concerned about the level of acidity of the varieties of tomatoes I was growing and the safety of my end product and I despised all the work of skinning and seeding the tomatoes. I decided if I could freeze my roasted tomatoes, I could easily freeze a similarly produced sauce. This simple roasted tomato sauce quickly became a family favorite.
Ingredients
- •15 cloves of garlic, peeled
- •3.6-4.5 Kg (8-10 lbs) any variety of tomatoes (except cherries), meaty are best, all cored (stem section out), quartered
- •1.3-1.8 Kg (3-4 lbs) medium onions, skin removed and quartered
- •.5 Kg (1 lb) chopped carrots (optional, but they add sweetness to allow for elimination or reduction of added sugar)
- •Other optional chopped vegetables to your taste: sweet peppers, mushrooms
- •118 ml (½ cup) dried Italian seasoning herbs or 237 ml (1 cup) fresh, chopped herbs (rosemary, basil, oregano, thyme)
- •59 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil
- •118-237 ml (½ - 1 cup) red wine (optional)
- •Salt and pepper
- •59 ml (1/4 cup) sugar (optional, but helps cut acidity if you don’t add carrots)
Preparation
Preheat oven to 232°C (450°F). Lightly grease a large roasting pan, add and gently stir all the ingredients except for salt, pepper and sugar, and place in oven.
Roast for approximately 1 ½ hours, stirring every half hour. Vegetables will char. After cooking down the sauce, leave it chunky or use a stick blender (preferred) right in the pan to puree all ingredients. Taste the sauce and add up to 59 ml (¼ cup) of sugar, and salt and pepper to your taste. Freezes for up to 8 months.
