Roasted Tomato Sauce for Freezing or Canning

(Updated – August 28, 2020)

Summer is coming to a close, and it is time to round up the last of the tomatoes and preserve them for winter.

We made quite a few batches of this roasted tomato sauce. It is so good, we even ate it as tomato soup…yes, it’s just that good! We love it because it allows you to mix different types of tomatoes. You can use whatever is still doing well in the garden and create something easy and delicious!

Here’s what to do:

• Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Gather some fresh ingredients. Use whatever fresh tomatoes you have handy. We used our gnarly heirlooms, plum tomatoes & cherry tomatoes. You’ll also need a couple of small onions, a handful of basil, and a couple of peppers, from the garden.

• Clean your tomatoes and remove any unpleasant spots and place them on a baking tray.

NOTE: How or if you cut the tomatoes will depend on their size and the toughness of their core. We let the cherry tomatoes whole, but halved most of the plums and just cut out the green core. The larger tomatoes, we cored and cut down to size so those pieces were comparable to the halved plum tomatoes.

• Clean & slice onions, and quarter peppers, removing seeds, clean basil and add everything to the tray.

• Drizzle the contents with a little olive oil. Use just enough so that they don’t stick. Add a little at a time, and then use your clean hands to simply roll all of the pieces around to mix them up so that they all have a little oil. A little salt is optional here… we used just a dash of sea salt.

• Bake uncovered for about 45 minutes – 1hr.

NOTE: This will vary somewhat depending on the size of your pieces and the amount of moisture that your tomatoes have. The level of roasting is a personal choice…if you don’t like charred food, remove them before that happens.

• Spoon everything into a ½ Gallon Jar & use an immersion blender to pulverize everything right in the jar.

NOTE: The level of smoothness is up to you. If you like chunky sauces or tomato soups, then just pulse it, or use a hand masher. If you prefer it smoother, then just blend away until you’ve got the right texture. Keep in mind that if you use a large amount of cherry tomatoes, there will be a higher skin to pulp ratio…try to puree those batches a little longer to be sure that any skins are smaller.

This recipe is great for freezing. We prefer to freeze in the Ball Widemouth 24 oz. Jars so that we don’t have staining. Just be sure to heed the “fill to here” freezing line that’s on the jar. Here’s some pretty important tips on freezing in jars.

If you want to can your roasted tomatoes, just skip the herbs & oil. Process in pint jars – according to Ball Blue Book, add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to each pint and process in a boiling water bath for 35 minutes.

Because our tomato availability varied, not one of our batches turned out exactly like the previous. Some had more reds, and then the next one might have more of the yellow tomatoes – which resulted in a lovely warm sauce much lighter in color.  We also love that we aren’t losing the volume and nutrition that’s in the skins! (Oh, and it was nice that we could skip the tedious task of removing the skins!) What was consistent was that our family loved each and every batch!

Many thanks to Val Baer, for teaching us this method during one of her canning workshops.

Experts links on preserving tomatoes

• National Center for Home Food Preservation – Canning Tomatoes
• Clemson Cooperative Extension  – Preserving Tomatoes

Creative tomato recipes & ideas

• Our Tomato! Tomato! Pinterest board
• Food in Jars – Five Ways to Preserve Small Tomatoes
• The Kitchn – How to Make and Preserve Tomato Sauce