Super Easy Pasta Sauce

I don't know about you, but I cannot stand to buy pasta sauce when you look at the ingredients list and find things like corn syrup, sugar, "natural flavorings", and soybean oil. The price doesn't bother me, but the weird ingredients and sad flavor do. Sooo, when I started my wee little garden a couple years ago, growing tomatoes became serious business. Each year I've started seedlings for paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and heirloom varieties. The paste tomatoes are an absolute must I learned, because without them the sauce is more like soup, and after boiling the soupy sauce down, the fresh flavor is cooked out and replaced with something pretty acidic and bitter (which is probably why commercial sauce relies on the addition of sweeteners and "natural flavorings.") 

Every year I try to grow paste tomatoes, and each year so far, I have failed, winding up buying the pretty, pear-shaped beauties from local growers. Thankfully I've been buying from them long enough that I can get a really fair price. Cherry and heirloom tomatoes are also essential because both offer their own huge, fruity, tomato-y flavor that paste tomatoes don't provide. These guys have been pretty simple to grow, with each plant delivering tons of produce. Don't worry though, you really don't have to grow these if you aren't so inclined. Hop down to your favorite produce market (I love our local Farmhouse Table Store) or your local farmer's market (I'm also a big fan of ours) to pick up what you need. This recipe is just for simple tomato sauce (Pomodoro), but you could certainly add seasonings, herbs, etc. when you serve fresh. (I don't can mine with lots of extras because I like to avoid pressure canning when possible for no reason other than pure laziness.)

Super Easy Pasta Sauce
Ingredients:
10 pounds paste tomatoes, halved
5 pounds cherry tomatoes (I use Sun Gold and Sweet 100's)
5 pounds heirloom tomatoes, quartered (I use a mixture of Black Krim, Cherokee Purple, Mr. Stripeys and Brandywines)
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
6 T lemon juice*
3 tsp salt*

*these are only needed if you are going to can your sauce up. If not, the sauce can be served immediately, as-is, or with the seasonings and additions of your choice.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Take two large baking sheets and add half of the olive oil to each sheet. Divide the tomatoes evenly among the sheets and place into the oven. 

 

Walk away and find something else to do. Come back in 2 hours and rotate the cookie sheets. Walk away again. In another 2 hours, remove the baking sheets from the oven. The tomatoes should look slightly charred around the edges, with little to liquid remaining. 

Run the mixture through a food mill to create a thick sauce. 

If you are canning, fill sterilized quart jars with the sauce, 2 T of lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt, leaving 1/2-inch of head space at the top. This should yield 3 quart jars, depending on your tomatoes. Process in a boiling water canner for 40 minutes.