I am so pleased with my first batch of canned tomato sauce, the huge amount of joy and satisfaction I feel when I know our own onions, peppers, garlic, tomatoes, celery and leeks made this sauce, it is another successful step forward in our self sufficient lifestyle, I also love the glut of over a hundred jars in my larder, just from the tomatoes! I am going to need a bigger larder!
This paves the way for next year's food growing and preserving list, I am currently working on our self sufficient cook book on all the meals we can provide from our garden to plate throughout each season with only relying on a few larder items that we don't grow. This lifestyle envokes a truly positive satisfying feeling from producing your own fresh food and lowering the burden on Mother Nature, what's more all the fodder and weeds from the garden supplement the feed for our chickens and pigs
Ingredients
(makes 14 jars)
(14 kilner or glass jars with lids)
8kg tomatoes or 5kg tinned
1 tbsp coconut oil
6 red peppers
4 whole bulbs garlic
Sea salt
Fresh black pepper
6 onions diced
10 sprigs of thyme
4 sprigs oregano
4-6 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 lemons juiced
First job is to sterilise all your new kilner or used jam, chutney or pickle jars, all jar lids must have a pvc coating because tomatoes have a high acidic content and this important to the safety of the long term preserve. Take all,your jars and lids and run them through the dishwasher on a high heat or wash in hot soapy water and rinse and dry well, the jars are now ready to use.
Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees, take the bulbs of garlic and loosely wrap in tin foil, pop in the oven and roast for an hour or so until the garlic just wants to ooze out when a minimal amount of pressure is applied to the skin, remove from the oven and squeeze out all of the gorgeous roasted sweet garlic purée, keep to one side for later.
In a deep large pan place the coconut oil, on a medium heat add the onions and gently cook, not allowing them to colour for twenty minutes, while the onions are soften turn on your gas ring if you have one, if not crank up your grill to it highest heat and roast your red peppers under the heat until the skin burns turn until all sides are burnt. Place in a bowl and cover with cling film, this will allow the heat from the skins to creat condensation which will make the next stage of removing the skins and seeds really easy making this a quick process and worth every bit of effort for the final flavour in your sauce.
Next add the tomatoes, garlic puree and the skinned de- seeded roasted red peppers to the onions and heat through, the tomatoes will slowly break down creating a sauce, once all the tomatoes have broken down completely add the balsamic vinegar, sugar, thyme, oregano, sea salt and black pepper, gently simmer for half an hour.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if needed, next you want to remove the tomatoe skins from the sauce, you can stick blend the sauce or as I do pick them out of the sauce one at a time, then stick blend or you can pass the sauce through a fine meshed sieve using the back of a spoon to apply pressure to squeeze all the sauce through. Return to the heat and keep on a low simmer while you heat the preserving jars.
Place all the clean dry jars and lids in your pre-heated 200 degree oven for five to seven minutes to sterilize, remove the jars fill each jar with a teaspoon of the lemon juice then the tomatos sauce leaving a inch gap at the top to allow for expansion in the next stage of preserving, screw on all the lids tightly and place in a large pan of boiling water, when the pan comes back up to the boil start timing for 35 minutes, remove from the pan and leave to cool, one of my favourite sounds from my kitchen is hearing the pinging of theses canned jars re-sealing the pressure button on the lids while they cool, the jars are now ready to be stored for use when you need them.
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