Making Homemade Tomato Sauce

Last weekend I finally got around to making homemade tomato sauce from last summer's Roma tomatoes that have been waiting for me in the freezer. I had 10 gallon sized freezer bags full. I set them out on the counter over night to start thawing (on cookie sheets to catch leaks) but they still weren't thawed enough to peel (it was about 62* in our house overnight). I put the tomatoes on cookie sheets and put them into a low oven (200*) until they were thawed just enough to peel easily and warm enough for my hands to handle it. I made the mistake of leaving a few of them in too long and they got hot. The insides were mush and made it impossible to separate the pulp from the seeds and skins.

After peeling off the skins and giving them a gentle squeeze to get most of the seeds out, I put the pulp into bowls and here's what I ended up with.

One way I found to get every bit of tomato pulp was to put the skins and seeds in a strainer with larger holes and press it. The seeds were held back by the strainer but I was surprised at how much pulp I was able to get from what I probably would have tossed in the compost pile.

In my big stock pot, I sauteed 4 large onions with about 1/4 cup of olive oil. I added 4 cloves of garlic after the onions were soft (we don't like a lot of garlic).

After the onions and garlic were soft, I dumped in the tomato pulp and added salt, pepper, and Italian Seasoning.

After it had been simmering for about 2 or 3 hours (uncovered and stirring often) I added a bit of sugar.

I filled my recycled quart yogurt containers about 3/4 of the way up. (except the one that I filled to the top to be used the next night in lasagna).

From my 10 gallon bags of tomatoes, I got enough sauce for 10 dinners. It's amazing that it really takes a whole gallon of tomatoes to make 3 cups of sauce. It was really worth all the hard work to prep those tomatoes because the sauce is really delicious and fresh tasting.

Now I'm wondering how to fit in 4 times as many tomato plants in my garden this year.....