Making and Canning (or freezing) Homemade Spaghetti Sauce from Fresh Tomatoes!

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Making and canning your own spaghetti sauce is something families remember years later.  No store bought spaghetti sauce compares with the taste of that made from your own tomatoes from your garden or fresh-picked from a local farm!  In the middle of the winter, you can make a meal with your spaghetti sauce and taste the summer flavor of fresh tomatoes. This recipe is for spaghetti sauce WITHOUT meet - you can add meats, but that requires a pressure canner and a different set of directions (see this page for directions for spaghetti sauce with meat)

Here's how to do it, in easy steps and completely illustrated.   This method is so easy, ANYONE can do this!  It's a great thing to do with your kids!

Ingredients and Equipment

Process - How to Make Spaghetti Sauce from Fresh Tomatoes

Step 1 - Selecting the tomatoes

It's fun to go pick your own and you can obviously get better quality tomatoes!  

At right is a picture of tomatoes from my garden - they are so much better than anything from the grocery store. And if you don't have enough, a pick-you-own farm is the pace to go!  At right are 4 common varieties that will work:

 

Top left: Beefsteak	Top right: Lemon Boy, yellow
Bottom left: Roma, paste-type	Bottom right: Better Boy

The picture at right shows the best variety of tomato to use: Roma; also called paste tomatoes.  They have fewer sides, thicker, meatier walls, and less water. And that means thicker sauce in less cooking time!

Also, you don't want mushy, bruised or rotten tomatoes!

Step 2 - Removing the tomato skins

Here's a trick you may not know: put the tomatoes, a few at a time in a large pot of boiling water for no more than 1 minute (30 - 45 seconds is usually enough)

then....

Plunge them into a waiting bowl of ice water.

This makes the skins slide right off of the tomatoes!  If you leave the skins in, they become tough and chewy in the sauce, not very pleasant.

Step 3 -  Removing seeds and water

After you have peeled the skins off the tomatoes, cut the tomatoes in half.  Now we need to remove the seeds and excess water. 

Step 4 - Squeeze of the seeds and water

Just like it sounds: wash your hands then squeeze each tomato and use your finger or a spoon to scoop and shake out most of the seeds.  You don't need to get fanatical about it; removing just most will do.

Step 5 - Drain the tomatoes

Toss the squeezed (Squozen? :) tomatoes into a colander or drainer, while you work on others. This helps more of the water to drain off.  You may want to save the liquid: if you then pass it through a sieve, screen or cheesecloth, you have fresh tomato juice; great to drink cold or use in cooking! By draining the water off now, you'll end up with a thicker spaghetti sauce in less cooking time! And that preserves vitamins (and your sanity).

Step 6 - Get the jars and lids sterilizing

The dishwasher is fine for the jars; especially if it has a "sterilize" cycle.  I get that going while I'm preparing everything else, so it's done by the time I'm ready to fill the jars. 

Be sure to let it go through the rinse cycle to get rid of any soap!

Lids:  Put the lids into a pan of boiling water for at least several minutes. 

Note: everything gets sterilized in the water bath (step 7)
anyway, so this just helps to ensure there is no spoilage later!)

Step 7. Mix or your own seasoning?

Either works equally well. The spaghetti sauce mix for canning has the advantage of being tested and VERY easy to use. It's basically corn starch, onion powder, salt and seasoning. It doesn't have any preservative to improve the canning, so the advantage is just that it is easier.  Remember, this recipe is for NO meat! (see this page for directions for spaghetti sauce with meat)

Otherwise, use: 

A note about spices: Less spice, especially garlic and onions in canned sauce is better.  They tend to strengthen and sometimes become bitter in storage.  So use less when you prepare the sauce and add more when you actually use it, if you want!

Step 8 - Combine and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer

Combine the tomatoes and spices together in a big pot.  There's generally no need to add liquid, most types of tomatoes have so much water, we will need to boil it down to drive off much of the water to thicken the sauce. If your tomatoes are watery, boil it down before you add the spices, to avoid them becoming too strong.

You don't need to overcook it; just bring it to boiling to sterilize it, mix the seasonings and cook down the tomatoes.

Step 9 - Fill the jars with sauce and put the lid and rings on

Fill them to within ¼-inch of the top, seat the lid and hand-tighten the ring around them.  

NOTE: if you want to freeze the sauce instead, just fill your freezer containers (I like Ziploc freezer bags in the quart size), fill them completely, eliminate air pockets, seal them and pop them in the freezer.  You're done!

Be sure the contact surfaces (top of the jar and underside of the ring) are clean to get a good seal! 

Step 10 - Process (Boil) the jars in the canner

Put them in the canner and keep them covered with at least 1 inch of water. Keep the water boiling. Process the jars in a boiling-water bath for 35 minutes for pints and 40 minutes for quarts.

If you have a pressure canner, use it and process the sauce for the time in the tables below, as appropriate for your altitude, jar size and type of canner.

This document was adapted from the "Complete Guide to Home Canning," Agriculture Information Bulletin No. 539, USDA, revised 1994.

Reviewed June 2006.

Pressure canners work better for tomatoes and other low acid photos - you'll get less spoilage with a pressure canner.

I prefer a pressure canner (see photo below) or a larger 33 quarter water bath canner, shown at right - it is much deeper, so it is neater, no boilovers, and allows you to cover the tallest jars with several inches of water to ensure safety! To order one, click on Canning supplies and select the canner that is right for your stove (regular or flat bottomed for glass or ceramic stoves)

Step 11 - Done

Lift the jars out of the water and let them cool without touching or bumping them in a draft-free place (usually takes overnight)  You can then remove the rings if you like. Once the jars are cool, you can check that they are sealed verifying that the lid has been sucked down. Just press in the center, gently, with your finger. If it pops up and down (often making a popping sound), it is not sealed. If you put the jar in the refrigerator right away, you can still use it. Some people replace the lid and reprocess the jar, then that's a bit iffy. If you heat the contents back up, re-jar them (with a new lid) and the full time in the canner, it's usually ok.

Frequently Asked Questions about making tomato sauce - Click here

Other Equipment:

From left to right:
1. Jar lifting tongs          to pick up hot jars
2. Lid lifter          - to remove lids from the pot          of boiling water (sterilizing )
3. Lid         - disposable - you may only         use them once
4. Ring        - holds the lids on the jar until after       the jars cool - then you don't need them
5. Canning jar funnel       - to fill the jars

Home Canning Kits This is the same type of  standard canner that my grandmother used to make everything from applesauce to jams and jellies to tomato and spaghetti sauce!. This complete kit includes everything you need and lasts for years: the canner, jar rack, jar grabber tongs, lid lifting wand, a plastic funnel, labels, bubble freer, and the bible of canning, the Ball Blue Book. It's much cheaper than buying the items separately. You'll never need anything else except jars & lids! To see more canners, of different styles, makes and prices, click here!For more information and current pricing: Click here for a larger photo, more information, pricing, ordering, etc. Average Customer Review: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Answers to Common Questions

What did I do wrong if my jars spoil?

Tomatoes are a low acid fruit - adding lemon juice helps, processing at least 35 minutes in the water bath canner, or better still, using a pressure canner almost eliminates spoilage.  If you don't have a pressure canner, you must boost the acid level of the sauce, by adding 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid per quart of sauce. 

The question everyone asks: Can you add meat?

With a water bath canner, absolutely, definitely NOT.  The temperatures do not get high enough to kill the type of bacteria that can attack meat and make you sick, or even kill you.  However, with a pressure canner, it IS possible.  I have complete directions here! I don't do it, simply because... have you ever tasted canned meat?  Yes, it is called SPAM.  My recommendation is to can without the meat and add fresh browned ground meat or meatballs when you use the sauce!

Meat, Part 2 - I noticed you said it is best not to put meat in the sauce, as it might spoil as a child my mom canned all her meat with nothing but salt in it as she had no freezer. I cannot remember a problem with it going bad. She submerged the jars in a canning pot with a wire rack under it and boiled it for 4 hours always making sure the meat in the jar was covered with water so it would not spoil, also the jars kept covered with water at all times for four hours of boiling. "

It is statistically possible to engage in a very dangerous activity and still experience no harm.  For example, one of my father's friends charged the beach at Iwo Jima in World War 2, (definitely, one of the riskiest things you could do) and yet he survived without a scratch, while 7 of 10 of his platoon died.  Canning meat in a water bath is the same. 

The problem is that Botulism is not killed by temperatures under 240.  Water baths only reach 212.  You could boil it for 4 days and the botulism would still survive.  By the time you ate the jars, enough may not have grow to make you ill.  But it is still very, very dangerous.

I could send you dozens and dozens of statements supporting what I stated above from many universities and food authorities.  Here is one example from the University of Maine:

Match the canner to the food

There are two types of home canning methods: boiling-water-bath canners and pressure canners. The type of canner that you use should be based upon the type of food you are preserving. According to UMaine Food ScienceSpecialist Beth Calder, fruits, pickled foods, sauerkraut, marmalades, fruit spreads, jams, jellies, fruit butters (except for pumpkin) and salsa can be safely preserved using the water-bath canning method.  "However, make sure you use a scientifically tested recipe from a reputable resource," she says.

All other foods should be preserved using a pressure canner. This is because botulism-producing bacteria produce spores that can survive boiling water temperatures, but are destroyed using a pressure canner with the appropriate time and pressure, which reaches temperatures between 240 and 250 degrees F.

I have read in other homemade spaghetti sauce recipes that you need to cook the mixture for at least 4-5 hours. Is this necessary?

I suppose if you really want to make sure that absolutely no vitamins survive, you could cook it that long! :) The only reason people used to tomato sauce that long was the Roma paste-type tomatoes, with thicker walls, meatier with fewer seeds and less water didn't exist, so they had to cook it for hours to get rid of water and thicken it. And of course, modern sauce mixes that contain a little bit of corn starch as a thickener, also help shorten the time.

And for those who want to go strictly organic and au naturale, my method of squeezing out the excess water and seeds eliminates much of the excess juice (which you can save as tomato juice for drinking) and lets you start with a thicker tomato pulp which means much shorter cooking time!

Remember to ALWAYS call the farm or orchard BEFORE you go - weather, heavy picking and business conditions can always affect their hours and crops!

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