dinner

 

This is not your grandma’s tomato sauce recipe. And Bonus -There is no need for boiling, peeling, or seeding the tomatoes for this sauce!

I make this slow cooker tomato sauce every year because we love homegrown tomatoes and I always plant too many tomato plants.

This recipe makes about four (4) quarts of sauce. I freeze it and give it to my friends and family and then we have a taste of summer even in the middle of our Michigan winter. We use this as a pasta sauce, add some Parmesan cheese after you warm it, or add a little cream and eat it as a soup with grilled cheese. So delish!

 

Tools

•       Slow cooker / Crock Pot
•       Cutting board
•       Large knife
•       12” sauté pan
•       High powered Blender
•       Butchers twine (optional)
•       Ladle
•       Kitchen towel
•       Saucepan
•       Quart sized zip-top freezer bags
•       Cookie sheet (optional)

Slow Cooker Tomato Sauce-Ingredients

◦       One large onion chopped ( about 2 cups)
◦       One large carrot or two small carrots cut into chunks
◦       Tablespoon of minced garlic

◦        a cup or so of fresh herbs like basil thyme and oregano I make a BOUQUET GARNI*
◦       2 teaspoons of salt
◦       1 teaspoon of pepper
◦       2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
◦       half teaspoon of garlic powder
◦       half a teaspoon turmeric
◦       1/4 cup of water or wine
◦       12 cups of chopped tomatoes-about 12 tomatoes

 

RECIPE Directions

1.      Sauté the chopped onion in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. On medium-high heat. You want a hard sear on them to get some brown color. It will take about 10 minutes.
2.      just add all the other ingredients into your slow cooker. Remove any bad spots on your tomatoes and remove the stem/core of your tomato and roughly chop them.
3.      Set your slow cooker to buy for four hours or low for 6 to 8 until all the vegetables are broken down and soft.
4.      Fill your blender halfway full of your tomato mixture. Cover the top of your blender with a kitchen towel and your hand.  When you put hot liquid into a blender it expands and may take the top

off DO NOT OVERFILL YOUR BLENDER WITH HOT LIQUID.  If you are worried then let your mixture cool overnight and blend it the next day.
5.      Blend sauce until smooth. Pour your sauce into your saucepot and stir to combine. Refrigerate for up to one week**

**DELISHTIPS

• I like to freeze the sauce in zip-top freezer bags. I fill them full and push the air out and freeze them flat on cookie sheets. That way they stack easily in my freezer and I have tomato sauce all winter long.

 

• A BOUQUET GARNI is simply a bunch of herbs tied with butcher twine so that you can just lift the herbs out easily when they are done. You do not have to use this for the recipe you can just pick out the herbs after the sauce is done.