Roasted Crushed Tomatoes

Roasted Crushed Tomatoes. The white specks visible are not seeds, but rather pieces of garlic.

This recipe is a bit of a cross between pasta sauce and crushed tomatoes. It’s a little thicker than crushed tomatoes, so you should be able to use it as a pasta sauce with just a slight bit of simmering in a pot. It’s delicious: it’s got garlic, onion, olive oil and oregano in it. Just a classic Italian combo!

This is an older recipe that has been carried forward in various Ball Blue book editions for some time now. The exact roasting procedure for the tomatoes that Ball suggested didn’t work as well for us as does the newer roasting steps they are using in their more newly-minted books. So the second time, we followed their more recent steps for the tomato roasting part. See Recipe Notes if you are interested.

This is a tested recipe from Ball. (Yes, it’s safe to use oil in tested recipes that call for it.)

The recipe

If you wish to double or triple the batch, just do the math first on paper.

Jar size choices: Either half-litre (pint) jars OR litre (quart) jars

Processing method: Water-bath canning

Yield: 4 x litre (quart) jars

Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)

Processing time: Either size of jar for 85 minutes (sic). Adjust time for altitude when over 300 metres / 1000 feet.

Note: we haven’t listed steam canning as an option for the processing method as researchers recommend steam canning sessions no longer than 45 minutes for fear that some smaller models of steam canners may run dry.

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Roasted Crushed Tomatoes

This recipe is a bit of a cross between pasta sauce and crushed tomatoes. It’s a little thicker than crushed tomatoes, so you should be able to use it as a pasta sauce with just a slight bit of simmering in a pot. It’s delicious: it’s got garlic, onion, olive oil and oregano in it. Just a classic Italian combo! A tested recipe from Ball home canning.

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American

Keyword Tomatoes

Prep Time 1 hour

Cook Time 2 hours

Total Time 3 hours

Yield 4 litre (quart) jars

Calories 227 kcal

Ingredients

• 250 g onion (washed, peeled, chopped. 1 ½ cups / ½ lb)
• 6 kg Roma tomatoes (12 lbs)
• 4 bulbs garlic (sic)
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon oregano (minced, fresh)
• 1 teaspoon salt (OR non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub)
• ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
• lemon juice (bottled. OR citric acid)

Metric - US Customary

Instructions

1. NOTE: See also our suggested alternative roasting process below under Recipe Notes.
2. Peel onion, chop, set aside
3. Wash tomatoes. Roast tomatoes on a grill or under a broiler, turning as needed, to blister all sides. Put the hot tomatoes into a paper bag, close the bag, and let the tomatoes sit in it for about 15 minutes.
4. In theory, the peels should be easy to peel now. (They weren't: see recipe notes.)
5. Peel tomatoes, and core them.
6. Cut tomatoes in half, seed them.
7. Cut tomatoes into 2 cm (½ inch) chunks, add to a large pot.
8. Place whole unpeeled whole garlic bulbs on a piece of tin foil. Drizzle the oil on them. Seal them in the foil. Bake in oven at 175 C / 350 F for 30 minutes, or until tender.
9. Remove from oven and let cool.
10. Separate cloves and peel.
11. In your large pot, combine the onion, tomato, garlic, and all remaining ingredients except the citric acid / lemon juice.
12. Bring pot to a boil, then lower to medium heat until mixture is piping hot. (Caution: pot bottom can scorch easily.)
13. Ladle hot tomatoes into heated half-litre (pint) OR litre (quart) jars.
14. Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
15. To half-litre jars, add ¼ teaspoon citric acid OR 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
16. To litre (quart) jars, add ½ teaspoon citric acid OR 2 tablespoons lemon juice
17. Debubble, adjust headspace to 2 cm (½ inch).
18. Wipe jar rims.
19. Put lids on.
20. Process in a water bath canner.
21. Process either size of jar for 85 minutes.

Reference information

How to water bath process.

When water-bath canning or steam canning, you must adjust the processing time for your altitude.

For salt substitute, Herbamare Sodium-Free was used as it is non-bitter and non-clouding.

Recipe notes

Alternative roasting procedure

We found Ball’s suggested roasting and peeling method for this recipe to be labour intensive. The “paper bag” treatment left tons of skin stuff on and led to an hour or so of very frustrating pick-picking to try to get it off. So, the second time around making this, we borrowed the more straight-forward roasting methods that Ball is now advocating in its more recently published recipes. Here’s how we approached the roasting the second time around.

• TOMATOES: Wash tomatoes, core them. Cut in half lengthwise (top to bottom.) Use spoon and / or fingers to dig out seed sacs. Place tomato halves upside down on baking sheets lined with tin foil (for easier cleanup, optional.) Bake at 220 C / 425 F for approximately 15 minutes or until skins start to wrinkle and char. (Don’t roast past that, or the tomatoes will start to dry out. We’re canning tomatoes, not dehydrating them.) Remove from oven, let cool to be safe to handle. Then pinch peels and pull them upwards to remove them. Gather up tomatoes, chop. Put in pot. Pour into pot any juice on the tray.
• ONION: Take 1 medium and 1 small onion (equals 1 ½ cups when peeled and chopped.) Wash. Leave the peel on. Cut in half, place cut side down on tray to roast with the tomatoes as per above. Then, when cool, peel and chopp it.
• GARLIC: Roast it on trays with the tomatoes as per above.
• And then pick up recipe at step 10 above, where everything gets combined, etc.

Other notes

• Instead of Roma, you can use another paste-type tomato.
• Yes, they mean whole bulbs of garlic, as in a bunch of cloves. Feel free to dial the amount of garlic back, or leave out entirely if your audience is not big garlic fans.
• Instead of bulbs of garlic, you could use 2 tablespoons minced garlic from a jar, skipping the oven stage and adding directly to the pot.
• Instead of fresh oregano, you could use half a tablespoon of dried.
• The citric acid / lemon juice, and the heat processing, is what assures the safety of this recipe. Don’t skip either step.
• If you have a heat diffuser, you might wish to use it during the simmering stage to prevent scorching.
• The seasoning is something you can safely change to suit your taste, provided you stick to dried herbs. You could for instance use lime juice instead of lemon juice, and some ground cumin etc to give it a Mexican spin. (Lime juice is even more acidic than lemon juice, so you can safely make the swap in that direction.)
• We saved the tomato peels for dehydrating and then grinding into tomato powder.

Recipe source

• Roasted Roma Tomatoes. In: Ball Blue Book. Muncie, Indiana: Healthmark LLC / Jarden Home Brands. Edition 37. 2014. Page 33.
• Also appears in: Ball Canning Back to Basics.  Healthmark LLC / Newell Brands. Birmingham, AL : Oxmoor House. 2017. Page 148.

Modifications made:

• None to ingredients. For roasting procedure, have switched to a more modern roasting technique now being used by Ball in its other books.

Nutrition information

Per 1 cup / 250 ml / 8 oz:

• 227 calories, 326 mg sodium
• Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 6 points
• Weight Watchers SmartPoints®: 9 points

* Nutrition info provided by MyFitnessPal

* PointsPlus™ and SmartPoints™ calculated by healthycanning.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® and SmartPoints® registered trademarks.