This time of year the tomatoes from the garden are arriving fast and furious. My husband planted a lot of Roma this season and I can barely keep up with making sauce. This is not a recipe per se, but it is a really good way to tease amazing flavor out of tomatoes and freeze them as a sauce for later use when it’s cold outside.
INGREDIENTS:
Tomatoes, whatever you have on hand, washed and halved or quartered, depending on the size.
Good olive oil
Sea salt
a little bit of sugar
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat broiler to 425 degrees.
Line a sheet pan with 2 layers of aluminum foil.
In a large bowl add halved or quartered tomatoes. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt. You want the tomatoes to have a thin film of oil. Salt to your liking, you can adjust the seasoning later as well.
Distribute the tomatoes into a single layer onto the prepared sheet pan and set in the middle of the preheated oven. Roast for about 15 to 20 min. I let a few spots on the tomatoes get black but not too many. When done, remove tomatoes and pass through a food mill set with the disk with the smallest wholes. Puree tomatoes into the bowl of a crock pot. Discard the skins and seeds left behind in the food mill.
Repeat with all the tomatoes you want to turn into sauce. You can use the same lined sheet pan over again. I like to have at least four or five sheet pans of roasted tomatoes. This will yield pretty much a full, large crock pot.
Add about 1/4 cup of sugar and adjust salt if necessary.
Set crock pot temperature to high and cook for 11 hours uncovered, yes that is correct, 11 hours (it’s the longest setting on my crock pot) until the sauce is reduced by about a third to a half. Stir occasionally.
Stir occasionally and make sure your crock pot doesn’t burn on the bottom. Mine doesn’t but I have the feeling not all crock pots are alike. This is how my sauce is gently cooking for 11 hours.
When done let cool completely and freeze in portions. I don’t add spices, onions or garlic to make it more versatile because I can always add it later. Use this sauce when you want to add some intense roasted tomato flavor to your soups or pasta sauces. Enjoy!
Brampton Bed and Breakfast Inn
Danielle Hanscom
the Chestertown, Maryland broad