This is a home-canning recipe for a plain but good pasta sauce based on roasted tomatoes.
It’s relatively straight forward to make, with a minimum of fussing, all things considered. And roasting the tomatoes saves a lot of time in reducing them to sauce consistency, compared to long simmering in a pot. It also sweetens and concentrates the flavour.
This is a tested home canning recipe from Ball. It’s meant to promote their HarvestPro Sauce Maker Machine, but you could make it with any food mill. In fact, we think you can do this without a food mill (see Recipe Notes.)
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: Either water-bath or steam canning
Yield: 4 x half-litre (pint) jars / 2 x litre (quart) jars
Headspace: 2 cm (½ inch)
Processing time: Half-litre (pint) jars for 35 minutes; litre (quart) jars for 40 minutes. Adjust time for altitude when over 300 metres / 1000 feet.
Roasted Rustic Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
- 6 kg Roma tomatoes (12 lbs)
- 250 g onion (1 ½ medium / ½ lb)
- 3 cloves garlic (washed, peeled and chopped)
- 2 teaspoons oregano (dried)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 250 ml red wine (1 cup / 8 oz. optional)
- 1 tablespoon sugar (optional)
- 1 teaspoon chile flakes (optional)
- 1 tablespoon salt (OR non-bitter, non-clouding salt sub. Optional)
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice (bottled. OR 1 teaspoon citric acid)
Instructions
- Heat oven to 190 C / 375 F.
- Wash tomatoes and core them.
- Cut into halves, lay out on baking sheets, cut side down.
- Wash onion, don't peel. Cut into halves, place halves on baking sheet cut side down.
- Roast tomatoes and onion until tomato skins start to wrinkle and char.
- Remove from oven, let cool.
- Peel the tomatoes by pinching the skins off them.
- Peel the onion, chop into chunks that will pass through a food mill.
- Put onion and tomato through a food mill using the coarse screen.
- Put tomato mixture in a large pot.
- Add the remaining ingredients except the citric acid / lemon juice.
- Bring pot to a boil, then lower heat and let simmer 15 minutes.
- Remove and discard bay leaves.
- Ladle hot sauce into heated half-litre (pint) OR litre (quart) jars.
- Leave 2 cm (½ inch) headspace.
- To half-litre jars, add ¼ teaspoon citric acid OR 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
- To litre (quart) jars, add ½ teaspoon citric acid OR 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- Debubble, adjust headspace.
- Wipe jar rims.
- Put lids on.
- Process in a water bath or steam canner.
- Process half-litre (pint) jars for 35 minutes; litre (quart) jars for 40 minutes. Increase time as needed for your altitude.
Nutrition
Reference information
How to water bath process.
How to steam can.
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.
What is the shelf life of home canned goods?
Recipe notes
- You’ll need about 60 to 70 medium-sized Roma tomatoes.
- Instead of Roma, you can use another paste-type tomato.
- For the sugar, you can use white or brown sugar, or omit.
- If you want a finer, seedless sauce, then use a finer screen on the food mill.
- If you want a finer sauce without seeds and don’t have a food mill, then scoop out the seeds from each tomato half before roasting them.
- Without a food mill, you could just whiz the peeled, roasted tomato and the peeled, roasted onion in a food processor.
Recipe source
Hearty Pasta Sauce. In: Ball HarvestPro Sauce Maker Recipe Guide. 2016. Page 6.
Modifications made:
- None.
Nutrition information
Per 1 cup / 250 ml / 8 oz:
- 150 calories, 892 mg sodium
- Weight Watchers PointsPlus®: 4 points
- Weight Watchers SmartPoints®: 6 points
Sodium goes down to 39 mg per cup without the added salt.
* 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.
Chad Borenz
Could I safely augment this recipe by adding commercially canned tomato paste?
Healthy Canning
You can add that after you open a jar of this sauce to use.
Erin
Do you use the liquid that cooks out of the tomatoes when roasting?
Staceh
Am I reading correct that the wine is optional?
Healthy Canning
Yes, confirming that Ball has indicated in the recipe that the wine is optional
Healthy Canning
If you are using Roma / paste-type tomatoes as indicated, there won’t be much liquid that comes out of the tomatoes. If instead you try to use table tomatoes or slicing tomatoes, and liquid comes out, you may add that to the pot you do the simmering in, but you may have to simmer for longer than the time suggested to get a good sauce consistency.
Anastasia
would it be ok to substitute red wine vinegar for the red wine?
Healthy Canning
Yes if that is your taste preference, that would be safe.
Lesley
i just came here to ask this, glad its already answered.