Pasta Sauce Prep * Preserve your fresh Tomato harvest #GardenCuizine #HealthyCooking #PomodoroSauce

Pasta Sauce Prep
Whole Peeled Tomatoes

We make Pomodoro (tomato) Sauce from scratch most of the time. We do not always have fresh locally grown or homegrown Jersey tomatoes to use though, so we often use canned San Marzanos. At the end of the summer, when our homegrown tomatoes are plentiful, we make homemade sauce in batches as the tomatoes vine ripen. Once picked, if the tomatoes ripen too fast, we move them to the fridge until we are ready to cook them.

This year was a challenging tomato year for us. We got Tomato Blight really bad in our main garden. But, even so, we are surprised and thankful to be harvesting lots of fresh tomatoes.

Yesterday, Harry started preparing our first batch of sauce. We plan to save it for Christmas lasagna dinner. We all enjoy a taste of our garden in December. 

The first step to making homemade pasta sauce is to prepare the tomatoes. Sort through and pick out tomatoes that would make the best sauce. Meaty tomatoes such as San Marzano Plum and Goldman's heirloom make the best pasta sauce, or "gravy" as some Italians call it. We often add and cook down other heirloom tomatoes too; otherwise, we could never eat them fast enough!

Sauce Prep (can be done day or week ahead of cooking)
Gather all the ripe tomatoes you plan on using for your first batch of sauce. You will need one large pot of boiling water and one large pot of water with ice.  
Note: you do NOT have to score the tomatoes with an X on the bottom before blanching! This is very time consuming and not necessary when you are working with a lot of tomatoes.

1) Boil water in a large pot. In batches, blanch the tomatoes for about one minute in the boiling water
3) Remove with a slotted spoon to ice bath. The water just has to be cold; if your ice melts, don't worry about it. Let tomatoes float in the cold water until the skins wrinkle.
4) Remove and core the tomatoes. Harry likes his new Hullster Tomato Corer from Gardener's Supply Co.
5) Peel tomato skins. For sauce, place whole peeled tomatoes in a bowl; cover and refrigerate until ready to cook your Pomodoro sauce.

Besides high quality tomato sauce, peeled whole tomatoes can be frozen for later use in soup, stewed tomatoes, chili and other recipes.

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