Making Tomato Sauce

When the plum tomatoes are ripe, its time to make tomato sauce.  We have tried numerous different ways to actually get from the whole tomato to the final product of the actual thick tomato sauce.  Since I like technology, we opted for the fastest way using the least manual labor.  We have been using this method for about 25 years now.

First we pick all the ripe tomatoes.  This year we used an heirloom variety call Amish Plum Tomato.  They are nice and plump and also good in salads.  We also like the size of the plum tomato becuse the fit into the juicer nicely.

Tub of Tomatoes

 First we take all the tomatoes, pull off the green stem and float them in a sink full of cold water to clean them.  Removing the green stems is optional, sometime we sometimes we do other times we don't.  It doesn't seem to make a difference. If we have a huge amount to do, its easier to keep them on as it cuts down the steps and the amount of time required.

We then set up our 40 year old Champion Juicer with the screen attachment.  When we juice the tomatoes, the juice falls through the screen and the seeds and skin get pushed out as waste.  We save this waste for later.

Our 40 Year Old Champion Juicer

We push the tomaotes, one by one through the juicer.  You can see this on this youtube video I posted.

After all the tomatoes are done,  we end up sauce and a pile of seed & skin.

Sauce from the juicer

Seeds and Skin as waste from the Juicer

Now we take the seeds and skin and quicky run them through a hand food mill to "squeeze" out the last bit of tomato goodness from them.  After once through the hand food mill, we a left with just a small amount of seeds and skin.

Compare this to the previous picture to see the result of the food milling process

 Now we cook the pots of reduce the amount of water in the juice to create a nice thick sauce.  These two pots cook down to one pot of thick sauce.

Two pots of sauce will reduce to one pot after cooking

When all done, we let the sauce cool and pour into zip lock bags for freezing.  We used to season it and  make spaghetti sauce, but now we save the seasoning for when we actually need it.  We also use as is with no spices for homemade pizza.  I will update this entry when I make a pizza with this sauce.

This entire process, from tomato to two pots of sauce took about 1/2 hour. The reducing the watery sauce to a nice consistency takes a little longer, but it just sits on the stove cook while we do other things around the house.