Tomato Sauce
recipes :: posted on March 30th, 2008
A few kilos of tomatoes landed on my doorstep, so I needed to find a home for them… The recipe I use involves a little guess work, but this one is very similar, so next time a bag of tomatoes lands on my doorstep, I’m going to try it out. I’ll add my recipe underneath, to compare.
- 2 kg tomatoes
- 3 green apples
- 3 onions
- 21/2 cups malt vinegar
- 1 clove garlic
- 2 cups sugar
- 2 tabs salt
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp whole cloves
- 1 tsp whole allspice
Chop up the tomatoes, onions and apples with the vinegar then simmer until they are well cooked and reduced to get rid of the excess water. Recipe says one hour. Then strain through a sieve which will need a bit of a push – I use the back of a ladle.
Return the pulp to the saucepan with the sugar, salt and cayenne. Tie the whole spices in a muslin cloth and bring the sauce to the boil again, reducing it until it is a good sauce consistency.
Bottle in washed and sterilised bottles, which needs 10 minutes in an oven at 150 degrees to achieve.
Then there is the recipe that I have used for years…
Chop up tomatoes and simmer to reduce to a pulp. Strain through a sieve and then return to the pan, measuring as you go. To each litre of pulp add…
- 2 0z salt
- 3/4 lb sugar
- 1 oz garlic
- 1/2 tsp cloves
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1/2 tsp cayenne
- 1 pint vinegar
The garlic, cloves and allspice can be used as whole and tied in a muslin cloth, or added as ground spice and chopped garlic which is the way I prefer to do it as you get a stronger flavour in the sauce. Also, and here comes the complicating bit, you have to watch the amount of salt and vinegar you add – for example the tomatoes I used were very watery, so when I measured the juice it came to 3 litres, but I only counted it as two as I thought it would need lots of reducing to get the right thickness for the sauce, which it did. My notes say – no more than 3 cups of vinegar to 2 pints of pulp – so there is yet another confusing bit to the recipe! I also usually use a couple of green tomatoes for pectin, or a couple of green apples.
So there it is – and why make sauce when it is so cheap to buy? Well it tastes like something, rather than just sweet and salty and so you don’t use anywhere near as much, and it has to be a much healthier choice! And what else do you do with all those extra tomatoes?
