Making a simple tomato sauce recipe is not so hard, you can decide to make a large barge of it and store it in the freezer or a small batch that you can use within a short time. All you just need to do when making a large batch of tomato sauce is to double or triple the number of tomatoes used. Tomato sauce can serve as a base for different things such as white rice, garlic bread, boiled yam, beef stew, or as a sauce for spaghetti.
The above tomato sauce is almost similar to this tomato soup which I made earlier on. This recipe doesn’t have to be complicated and if you have not made tomato sauce before, you can stick around and read through to learn the basics here.
You can use canned tomatoes that are readily available, they are very easy to work with. However, if you can’t get them, just buy your fresh ripe tomatoes from the grocery store and use them from scratch. I used fresh tomatoes for this tomato sauce, I started out by blanching the tomatoes in hot water to make sure the skin is completely removed. After that, the tomatoes were cut into smaller cubes so they cook fast and evenly. You can also take out the seeds but mine was not so significant and I didn’t. This process gives you a smooth sauce with no tomato skin littered everywhere in the sauce.
This homemade tomato sauce recipe doesn’t need any additional thickener, it thickens up on its own, all you need to do is to reduce your heat and cook simmer it uncover until it thickens up. Water can be added to achieve a thin consistency and if you desire to add fresh herbs, parsley, basil are good options. Dried herbs like oregano can be added to this sauce. You may also want to puree the sauce to a smooth consistency if you don’t like seeing chunks of tomatoes in your sauce. You can use fresh basil.
Watch the Youtube video below on how to make tomato sauce from scratch:
Tomato sauce ingredients
- 8 to 10 fresh organic tomatoes or canned tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano or fresh basil.
- 1 red onion, chopped
- 4 garlic, minced (optional)
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper (ground)
- 3 to 4 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 teaspoon sugar to neutralize the sour taste of tomatoes. If you want sugar free tomato sauce then use baking powder
Steps on how to make tomato sauce
- Blanch the tomatoes in hot water for 5 minutes and pull out the skin, completely.
- Cut the tomatoes into smaller sizes, chop onion, and garlic into smaller pieces. Set all aside.
- Place a pan on the heat, add 4 tablespoons of olive to the pan. Add the chopped onions and garlic and saute for 1 minute.
- Once the onion and garlic are fragrant, add the chopped tomatoes, cover, and allow to cook for 10 minutes.
- Season with 1/2 teaspoon of salt, dried oregano, and ground black pepper.
- You can add sugar or baking powder at this time to get rid of the sour taste of tomato sauce.
- To make creamy tomato sauce, you can use cream or unsalted butter, but it is optional
- Allow the sauce to cook for another 15 minutes.
- Leave the sauce to cool for a while first, pulse in a blender for some seconds to reduce the tomato chunks. If you want your homemade tomato sauce recipe to be chunky, then no need to pulse in a blender.
- Heat the sauce back in the pan for 5 minutes before storing it. Your homemade tomato sauce is ready.
- Store your tomato sauce in airtight jars and refrigerate or freeze until when needed.