Local farmer’s market had a great deal on Roma tomatoes so made another round of homemade marinara. Started with 50lbs of tomatoes, which yielded 11 quart jars.
Some tips and lessons learned:
Used the Ball garlic-basil recipe as a base but made some (safe!) tweaks to make an improved Rao’s inspired sauce:
Used citric acid instead of lemon for a more neutral flavor. (Ball calls for either.)
Chopped the onion and garlic finely and added to the juice at the reducing stage rather than sauteeing and adding to the tomatoes and running through the food mill.
Had some leftover of an excellent pinot noir, so chucked half a cup in as the sauce was reducing. Made a lovely difference.
Ended up adding just a bit of sugar/about a quarter cup—didn’t with the non-Romas we made sauce with the earlier this summer, but it has been a rough summer for tomatoes and these Romas just lacked that sweet ripeness.
We salt the jars rather than the sauce, so highly recommend adding a bit of salt to whatever you are tasting if you do the same.
An electric food mill is the greatest thing ever.
Maslins/French jam pots are great for this, greatly reduces worries about scorching. (Ask me how I learned this horrible lesson.)
Set aside a full day. It took almost 6 hours for the sauce to reduce to the consistency we wanted. That doesn’t count the prep and processing time.
Lots of work, but well worth the effort!
by HonoriaG
2 Comments
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That sounds delicious!
ETA: I am interested in how you did the onions. Why did you decide to do it that way?