🍅 🇮🇹 It’s sauce makin’ time! (And don’t dare call it gravy! Lol)

Safari_Gal_

Ok everyone. I married into a family tradition of Romans making tomato sauce from scratch.
(My husband’s family lives in Roma.) It takes the entire day and then I’m tomatoed out for a few weeks...

I wondered - does anyone else make their own tomato sauce? What ingredients do you use?

My Mother in law’s recipe is super simple- 3 ingredients: Tomato, sea salt, basil....

Then clean up for 5 hours lol

Mcwi3681

I just use plain tomatoes. Does your husband's family grow their own? What varieties? I love Amish paste!

Safari_Gal_

Mcwi3681 wrote: »

I just use plain tomatoes. Does your husband's family grow their own? What varieties? I love Amish paste!

@Mcwi3681 - Amish Paste are awesome!

They do grow a bunch of vegetables including tomatoes in Italy - but not enough for sauce. They grow San Marzanos. We have a friend who imports them in the Bronx for us so my MIL can make sauce when she in NY.

Unrelated - I always steal some of their Sorrento lemons 🍋 and put them in my luggage to use back in the states. They are so fragrant!

BarbaraHelen2013

Tomato, onion, garlic, oregano, basil, mint, bay leaf, black pepper, salt, (anchovies, sometimes) olive oil, pinch of sugar and I throw a Parmesan rind in there too. Knob of butter at the very end.

I heat the oil up with the onion and garlic VERY slowly with the seasoning and half the herbs. Once that’s heated and been sweating for 5 mins everything except the rest of the herbs and the butter goes in. Smallest gas ring, lowest setting, on a heat diffuser mat for 2-3 hours. Turn off heat. Fish out what’s left of the Parmesan rind, the bay leaf and add the rest of the fresh herbs and the butter.

Safari_Gal_

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

Tomato, onion, garlic, oregano, basil, mint, bay leaf, black pepper, salt, (anchovies, sometimes) olive oil, pinch of sugar and I throw a Parmesan rind in there too. Knob of butter at the very end.

I heat the oil up with the onion and garlic VERY slowly with the seasoning and half the herbs. Once that’s heated and been sweating for 5 mins everything except the rest of the herbs and the butter goes in. Smallest gas ring, lowest setting, on a heat diffuser mat for 2-3 hours. Turn off heat. Fish out what’s left of the Parmesan rind, the bay leaf and add the rest of the fresh herbs and the butter.

@BarbaraHelen2013 Oooooh - 🙌🏻 I’m intrigued by the anchovy! 🐟 Love em’ so!!

BarbaraHelen2013

Safari_Gal_ wrote: »

BarbaraHelen2013 wrote: »

Tomato, onion, garlic, oregano, basil, mint, bay leaf, black pepper, salt, (anchovies, sometimes) olive oil, pinch of sugar and I throw a Parmesan rind in there too. Knob of butter at the very end.

I heat the oil up with the onion and garlic VERY slowly with the seasoning and half the herbs. Once that’s heated and been sweating for 5 mins everything except the rest of the herbs and the butter goes in. Smallest gas ring, lowest setting, on a heat diffuser mat for 2-3 hours. Turn off heat. Fish out what’s left of the Parmesan rind, the bay leaf and add the rest of the fresh herbs and the butter.

@BarbaraHelen2013 Oooooh - 🙌🏻 I’m intrigued by the anchovy! 🐟 Love em’ so!!

I love them too! That deep salty tang! You don’t taste them in the sauce - I only add two, maybe three, from the tiny jar I get them in, minced really well. It just adds a umami depth to the sauce. I’ve always used them in a Bolognese style sauce too. I’m sure I must have read it in a recipe at some point but I don’t recall where!

Try it though, I think you’ll find it makes the sauce subtly better! 😊

corinasue1143

I used to put just onion in mine before I froze it. No salt. It may have just been my imagination, but I thought when I thawed it, it tasted more like raw, fresh tomatoes. Used it for everything, chili, Spanish rice, meatloaf, spaghetti sauce.
I also remember the 3-day cleanup 🙁☹️☹️

acpgee

We buy a huge box of tomatoes when there is a gllut at our green grocer and make tomato sauce to freeze for the winter. My sauce is olive oil, diced garlic, chopped onions, peeled tomatoes with eventually a pinch of sugar if the tomatoes are not great. Tomatoes like salt but that can be added later. I don't understand why people are complaining about the clean up. If you have a large cooking vessel (the spaghetti pot) cleanup is easy.

Tinydancer106

Sorry it's always going to be gravy over in my neck of the woods lol😉❤ My father was born in Avellino and even my grandmother would call it that....I make mine every other Sunday and freeze until the following time to make more....yup gravy😉

HOWEVER! You're making marinara sauce to an extent so we call that sauce lmao.....welcome to my little Italia neighborhood 🤗

I will try to post the recipe for my families version of gravy which is just made with pork...meatballs and sausages. Slow cooked with spices and cheese ...sometimes bracciale(rolled steak)..and there is an excellent recipe with san marazano tomatoes....butter and a while valida onions that blew me away it was so incedible....going to find my old recipes and add....wonderful thread and buon appetito tutti!😘💗

Spadesheart

I live right beside a great farmers market, that's an actual farmers market where you can buy bushels and half bushels of fruit and veg for a fraction of the price, as opposed to over inflated prices for bespoke local nonsense. It's my favourite thing, and early fall has become canning season for me!

This year its been my staple peach/ginger/cardamom jam, spiced pear and plum jam, wine poached pears, spicy and sweet tomato jam, hot pepper jelly with unripe tomato/poblano and anaheim peppers, salted caramel/coffee/banana jam, summer salsa with peaches/poblano peppers/mint and corn, slow stewed fall fruit jam and peach chutney. I didn't do much with pickles, though I would like to try my hand at kimchi or other active fermentations someday.

If you do have access to a lot of tomatoes, and do want to try something different, I highly suggest making tomato jam. It's a great all purpose saucy thing, can be made into a great vinaigrette, awesome on a bagel with cream cheese, in savoury tarts. I highly suggest it. It's also fairly foolproof; tomatos are super high in pectin. Make it a little less sweet, add apple cider vinegar, spices to taste, cook it down to desired consistency, and enjoy!

I still have apple cider to make; my trees offer a never ending supply of ugly apples and that can only really be destroyed to make something like cider or apple butter haha. I'll probably press like 30 liters. Before I give up haha.

acpgee

I will try adding anchovy too. Celebrity chef David Chang adds Vietnamese fish sauce to tomato sauce.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-6983429/Celebrity-chef-David-Chang-reveals-uses-FISH-SAUCE-instead-Parmesan-cheese-spaghetti.html

snowflake954

I married an Italian lawyer and moved to Rome over 30 years ago. I learned to cook from my mother-in-law and her 2 sisters. They were all widows and dressed in black. I'm a tall and blonde American of Polish ancestry. It was quite a sight in the kitchen. I learned to make tomato sauce from them. They canned their own San Marzano tomatoes with only salt and basil. To make simple sauce--put EVOO in a pan and throw in garlic cloves (peeled, and the best garlic has a purply red skin), brown the cloves slightly and then discard, throw in peeled tomatoes(canned or fresh) and watch out as the hot oil will spatter so I do it in the sink. Add salt to taste, fresh basil and a little sugar if the tomatoes are bitter. Cook on low heat, stirring now and again. I can make this sauce easily in half an hour.

snowflake954

snowflake954 wrote: »

I married an Italian lawyer and moved to Rome over 30 years ago. I learned to cook from my mother-in-law and her 2 sisters. They were all widows and dressed in black. I'm a tall and blonde American of Polish ancestry. It was quite a sight in the kitchen. I learned to make tomato sauce from them. They canned their own San Marzano tomatoes with only salt and basil. To make simple sauce--put EVOO in a pan and throw in garlic cloves (peeled, and the best garlic has a purply red skin), brown the cloves slightly and then discard, throw in peeled tomatoes(canned or fresh) and watch out as the hot oil will spatter so I do it in the sink. Add salt to taste, fresh basil and a little sugar if the tomatoes are bitter. Cook on low heat, stirring now and again. I can make this sauce easily in half an hour.

Forgot to add, when you put the sauce on your pasta (cooked al dente) add a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmigiano Reggiano.

aokoye

I typically make ragu once a year around this time. I'll make a large amount and then freeze it unless I have access to a pressure canner, in which case I'll can it. I did that last week actually Sometimes I'll make just "plain" tomato sauce, but that's rare. I use san marzanos or amish paste - it just depends on what's available and looks good from farmers market or the farm stand that I sometimes go to (at yes, an "actual farm").