Pasta sauce...is it practical?

**allenwrench** · 09-13-2008, 10:14 AM

I made some pasta sauce from s few of my tomatoes. I didn't weigh them, but it was a market produce bag about half full. I made about 22 ounces of strained tomato puree. I boiled it down to make sauce and ending up with about 7 ounces. Seems like one would have to grow tons of tomatoes to make large jars of sauce? Anyone do it for a year's supply? If so how much toms do you plant and what does it yield you in pints or quarts?

**Dave'sGirl** · 09-13-2008, 11:18 AM

I think there's a huge difference among tomato types. A paste tomato would have less water to cook out, thus producing more sauce in less time to cook down. And those types of tomatoes put out a lot more fruits per plant as opposed to the sandwich type of tomato.

I like to can stewed tomatoes and crushed tomatoes. I've never been the typ to make my own sauce. I work full time and just don't have the time it takes. Maybe after I retire I'll try it.

**Scattymum** · 09-13-2008, 11:25 AM

I have made some sauce from my tomato plants but i just gave up as there seemed to be soo many tomatoes needed for such a small amount of sauce

I wondered can i just freeze tomatoes as they are? and add them to stuff as i cook it?

**Ceashels** · 09-13-2008, 03:53 PM

Once in the blue moon when I made tomato sauce I always used a can of tomato paste along with my fresh tomatoes. This added texture along with some flavor, salt and sugar. I keep a few cans of tomato paste so if I need a quick pasta sauce (rarely these days) I can add it to canned crushed or stewed tomatoes.

**hippytreehugger4ever** · 10-10-2008, 04:55 PM

I grow 40-50 plants every year, so I do tomato products on a mass scale. This year I think I did about 45 pints of spagetti sauce, plus all the other stuff I can out of tomatoes.

**fixer** · 10-27-2008, 11:18 AM

We grow 14 tomato plants and have enough for app. 40 pints of pasta sauce and 35 qts. of whole tomatos. It does highly depend on the weather. We also make salsa every other year.

**elphie** · 10-27-2008, 04:46 PM

Originally Posted by Scattymum

I wondered can i just freeze tomatoes as they are? and add them to stuff as i cook it?

Sure, that's exactly what I did this summer. I washed and cored them, put them on cookie sheets in the freezer then transferred them to freezer bags. Since they aren't frozen together I can just take out what I need as I go. The peels slide right off of a frozen tomato when run under cold water. They don't cut or slice very well after freezing as they become mushy but I just use a potato masher to crush them in the pot and they seem to go further this way as they don't cook down as much.

**drusilla** · 10-29-2008, 08:49 PM

Sure it's practical! I usually can tomatoes 2-4 days at the end of summer. It's exhausting at the time but the benefits make it well worth it. For me there is nothing like seeing and eating the fruit (literally) of my efforts!

Remember, even if you can't make a whole years supply, anything you can preserve from the garden is something you don't have to buy at the grocery store.

**winner** · 11-01-2008, 11:24 PM

Yes, you can freeze tomatoes. During the season I buy them, wash, dice and put them in small container and ad in my recipes. I make my own tomato meat sauce fro diced, can tomatoes, it is much cheaper.

**RetiredVeryEarly** · 11-20-2008, 01:31 AM

This year I bought 16 tomato plants and had several more volunteers. We don't find the small meatier tomatoes to have as much flavor as the heirloom large types we grow. So we make our tomato sauce out of the fat juicy types. We ate a LOT of them straight up and in salads. We canned about 15 quarts of pasta sauce type product and about 9 quarts of tomato juice. Last year we canned even more, this year we ate more fresh.

If you are taking off the skins and seeds and pureeing and boiling down a lot perhaps you are not getting a really special product anyway. We keep our tomatoes very chunky, we cut and squish them to get out some seeds and juice, but then we just cut them roughly and cook a little. We scoop up the solids for the pasta sauce type stuff, using a slotted spoon. So our canned stuff is very thick and chunky and more reminiscent of fresh tomatoes. We put in our organic homegrown rosemary, garlic, oregano, and onions as well, it is very tasty. The liquidy part gets turned into tomato juice (which is an excellent soup base.) We also canned many quarts of salsa.

It is totally worthwhile because it all tastes great, and is organic. Organic pasta sauce is very pricey.

**RetiredVeryEarly** · 11-20-2008, 01:41 AM

this was duplicated, sorry!

**RetiredVeryEarly** · 11-20-2008, 01:55 AM

We planted about 16 tomato plants in each of the past few years. We get more as volunteers. We usually can 2 or 3 dozen quarts of pasta type sauce each year, plus a couple dozen quarts of salsa. We don't lose so much of our tomato volume in the canning process because we don't peel them, we just cut and squish some of the juice and seeds out. We run that part through a chinois and it gets canned as juice (makes an excellent soup base). The tomatoes themselves stay chunky and aren't cooked down much. We usually add homegrown garlic, rosemary, and oregano as well, so it is fabulous stuff. Think how much organic pasta sauce would cost! Pureeing and all that would lose so much of the fresh tomato effect, so we don't do that.

We make a lot of salsa as well, usually with roasted ingredients, and it is delicious as well. So definitely there is an advantage to canning your tomatoes. We find the paste type tomatoes rather tasteless compared to the fat juicy heirloom kinds, so we just plant the big tasty ones and work with them. We grow a lot of tomatoes on purpose so that there are extras to can, we do eat as many as we can fresh, too.

**RetiredVeryEarly** · 11-20-2008, 02:02 AM

Sorry, my connection kept dropping and I didn't realize my post went through so many time, Can't figure out how to delete so please bear with me.

**thriftstorequeen** · 11-20-2008, 09:32 AM

We made sauce and puree this year and froze it. Next year we will be canning it. We love the taste of homemade and we know how we grew it and what goes in the sauce. We made some tomatoe juice and green tomatoe pickles too. I wrapped some green tomatoes in newspaper and put them in our crawl space to ripen. The old-timers of which I'm quickly becoming, I know did this. I'll let you know how they turn out. We love tomatoes, I want to make salsa next year too. We planted 125 plants all around our yard. We grew them from seed and they just took care of themselves. We ate tons of them while they were fresh too!

**sue s** · 11-20-2008, 02:44 PM

I planted 50 tomato plants this year. 6 were slicing tomatos. The rest were Romas - for canning and sauce. I ended up with way more than I could process! Those little plum tomatos are reallly prolific! 12 quarts of sauce and over 20 of whole tomatos, and there was plently left on the vine I'm sorry to say.