How to make your own homemade tomato pasta sauce
Making your own homemade tomato pasta sauce is worth every second of the 30 minutes it takes to make. If it’s tomato season and you want to spend less on your grocery bill, this recipe is for you.
There are so many pro’s of buying jarred pasta sauce.
- It’s so much easier and quicker
- The effort involved is buying and storing it
- They’re great to have in the pantry for quick meals in a flash.
I can’t deny any of these absolute convenience points. My tip for buying tomato pasta sauce is to look at the ingredients.
What oils are they using? Oils like sunflower, canola and vegetable are highly processed and rancid before they leave the manufacturing plant. There’s also a heap of extra salt or preservative used to make the jar shelf stable.
So if you’re going to avoid all of that, you’ll wind up with a jarred tomato sauce that costs a fair chunk of $$$. Maybe $8 or more. And you could easily make 2L of the stuff (or more), for that same price. Which is what I recommend you build up to doing.
I’m over here pressure canning Tomato Chutney, Passata, Tomato Paste (and more). And while your Kitchen Mojo might not be at that level… yet. How about we make some homemade tomato pasta sauce?
All it takes is tomatoes in a pot.
That’s it. It’s up to YOU whether you want onions, garlic, herbs, sugar, salt, pepper, bone broth, stock powder AND how long you cook it for.
This is where batching or meal prepping comes into the scenario. Why make one portion of pasta sauce when you can make 6 and freeze? Although that’s going to depend on how much freezer storage you have.
And before you get all “Lou, you just finished ranting about why recipes aren’t the answer – why are you sharing a recipe?!”. This tomato sauce is a method of cooking, it’s a lesson in the seasons, it’s a lesson in batch cooking. Imagine if you never had to buy a shitty bottle of Dolmio pasta sauce again? Cos now you don’t. And you can leave the added vegetable oils, thickeners and mass produced junk on the grocery shelf where it belongs.
Home cooking is a wonderful like skill and necessary part of being a human – especially if you’re a mum – in my eyes it’s non-negotiable. But in reality, in the beginning when you’re honing this skill it can be hard to find your rhythm and TIME.
Portion out your sauces into jars or snap lock bags and freeze for when you need them. This is smart, thrifty kitchen planning and what I’m all about in my kitchen.
Ingredients
- 1 onion chopped
- 5 cloves garlic chopped
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 800 g fresh tomatoes chopped
- 1 tablespoon dried herbs
- Salt
- Pepper
Instructions
- In a pot on medium heat, sautee onions with a little salt for around 10 minutes.
- Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.
- Add remaining ingredients. Bring to boil and reduce to simmer.
- Cook sauce for 10 minutes with lid on. Then for another 10 minutes with the lid half on - to reduce liquid. Cook sauce for as long as you like, around 30 minutes things get magical.
- Store in an airtight container in fridge for around 1 week. Or freeze for up to 3 months.
