Friday, 26 July 2019

How to Make Roasted Tomato Sauce

How to Make Roasted Tomato Sauce

Making your own homemade tomato sauce is actually really easy and is a great way to control the flavor and quality of the food you’re eating.  This homemade Roasted Tomato Sauce just tastes so much better than the store-bought stuff and freezes great!

An overhead image of a glass jar with Roasted Tomato Sauce made with roma tomatoes, garlic, yellow onion, carrot, olive oil, basil, salt and black pepper.

Let’s see how many of your favorite dishes call for tomato sauce…

Lasagna? Check. Pizza? Check. Spaghetti? Of course. Chicken Parmesan?  Yaas.  Any Italian dish ever? Yep, that too.

When fresh tomatoes are ripe and delicious and bountiful, it’s a great time to make your own homemade roasted tomato sauce and freeze it so you’ll have it when it’s actually cold outside and you want to bake lasagna in the oven.

Every summer, when the markets are full of ripe tomatoes bursting with flavor, I buy a lot of tomatoes and make a lot of tomato sauce. Like, really a lot.

An overhead image of a large glass bowl with fresh roma tomatoes for the Roasted Tomato Sauce.

Instead of forcing Dustin to eat one tomato dish after another the entire summer, I oven roast them and make my own Roasted Tomato Sauce.  If it sounds fancy, don’t be worried – it’s so incredibly easy and simple.   It’s the perfect way to preserve tomatoes and (bonus) it freezes exceptionally well. That way, you know you’ll never have to reach out for the store-bought tomato sauce again.

What Tomatoes Are Best For Roasted Tomato Sauce?

I like using Roma tomatoes for this tomato sauce recipe because they don’t have a lot of seeds and are very flavorful, though many other types of tomatoes work great for marinara sauce.  Here are some great options for what tomatoes to use in your sauce:

  • Roma tomatoes (my fave)
  • San Marzano
  • Margherita
  • Big Mama
  • Heirloom
  • Amish Paste
  • Opalka

In general, you can look for what’s called a “paste” tomato, which, like the Roma and San Marzano tomatoes, are meatier, have fewer seeds, are firmed, and have less water content, making them flavorful and rich for making sauce.

An overhead image of a baking sheet with roma tomatoes, garlic cloves and carrots in olive oil roasted in the oven and ready to be turned into Roasted Tomato Sauce.

Why Oven-Roast Tomatoes for Tomato Sauce?

If you want to get more flavor from your tomatoes, roasting them is the way to go! Yes, it’s a slow process, but luckily not a very painful one. Roasting tomatoes (and, well anything, for that matter) intensifies the tomato flavor and brings out a richness you just don’t get from cooking them on the stove.

That being said, if you didn’t want to roast your tomatoes (or need to speed up the process), you could always cook this sauce on the stove.

A close up image of a baking sheet with roma tomatoes, garlic cloves and carrots in olive oil roasted in the oven and ready to be turned into Roasted Tomato Sauce.

What To Use Tomato Sauce In:

Roasted tomato sauce is a great base for so many amazing recipes, like:

It’s so versatile!  When making Roasted Tomato Sauce, I tend to get a bit carried away and make a lot of it, all at once. Dustin claims no one in their right mind could use up all that tomato sauce. Little does he know how many recipes call for this Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce! Homemade tomato sauce just tastes so much better than the store-bought stuff and is also much healthier.

An overhead image of a blender with roasted roma tomatoes, garlic and carrots ready to be blended into Roasted tomato Sauce.An overhead image of a blender with Roasted Tomato Sauce made with roma tomatoes, garlic, yellow onion, carrot, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper.

How To Store Homemade Tomato Sauce

To store homemade tomato sauce, just add it to a tightly sealed mason jar (like these mason jars) or a re-usable storage bag (like these bags).  Properly stored in an air-tight container like a mason jar or sealable bag, homemade tomato sauce can be stored in the fridge for up to 7 days.  If you don’t get to using it within that timeframe, the good news is that this sauce freezes very well.  

How To Freeze Homemade Tomato Sauce

Believe it or not, you can also freeze homemade tomato sauce for up to 6 months. 

Here are some tips for how to freeze tomato sauce:

  • allow the tomato sauce to fully cool to room temperature before placing in the freezer
  • try freezing it in 3-4 cup batches so you can grab it and let it thaw in the fridge overnight when you wanna use it for a specific recipe
  • use air-tight re-usable storage bags, like these ones
  • Once you have your bags filled with the tomato sauce, lay them flat in the freezer so they freeze as flat as possible to save space.  Once they’ve frozen, you can stand them up and consolidate them
  • To thaw frozen tomato sauce, remove from the freezer and either let set in the fridge overnight or place, sealed, in a bowl of cold water to speed up thawing

An overhead image of a kitchen counter with two glass jars with Roasted Tomato Sauce made with roma tomatoes, garlic, yellow onion, carrot, olive oil, basil, salt and black pepper.

Why is My Homemade Tomato Sauce Orange (Not Red)?

It is totally normal when you make homemade tomato sauce for it to be a little more orange than red because, when you blend it, you introduce air into the sauce, which turns it from red to orange.  Rest assure, it doesn’t alter the flavor, just the color.   If it really bugs you, you could use try one of the following:

  • use canned (no salt added) whole peeled tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes
  • blend the tomatoes, carrot, garlic and onion ahead of time and cook in a sauce pan 
  • hand mash everything once it’s roasted using a potato masher to avoid introducing extra air into the sauce
  • add a little tomato paste to deepen the red color

Personally, I think that’s kinda the beauty of homemade sauce is that the color varies. It tastes the same – even though the color is a little orange.

An overhead image of a spoon dipped into a glass jar of Roasted Tomato Sauce made with roma tomatoes, garlic, yellow onion, carrot, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Making your own homemade tomato sauce is actually really easy and is a great way to control the flavor and quality of the food you’re eating.  This homemade Roasted Tomato Sauce just tastes so much better than the store-bought stuff and freezes great!

  • 2 lbs Roma tomatoes, (cut in half)
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 1 medium yellow onion, (cut into large chunks)
  • 1 carrot, (cut into large chunks)
  • 1 tsp sea salt, (plus more to taste)
  • 1/2 tsp ground black pepper (plus more to taste)
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 3-4 basil leaves
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

  2. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper or you can use a large casserole dish.

  3. Lay out the tomato halves (skin-side up), onion, garlic and carrot and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Try to make this only one layer to allow for maximum roasting. Drizzle olive oil all over.

  4. Bake for 60 – 75 minutes, or until the edges of the tomatoes and onions begin to pull away from the tomato flesh.

  5. Allow to cool and then remove the peels using your hands.

  6. Carefully transfer the roasted contents to a food processor or blender (or a large mixing bowl, if using a stick blender), add the basil leaves and tomato paste, and pulse until smooth.

  7. Add additional salt and/or pepper, to taste.

Can be frozen up to 6 months.

This post contains affiliate links for products I use regularly and highly recommend.

The post How to Make Roasted Tomato Sauce appeared first on A Sweet Pea Chef.



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