Fresh Garden Tomato Sauce
It’s time to use those homegrown tomatoes to make a fresh garden tomato sauce!
The amount of recipes you can make using the tomatoes from your garden is endless. Anything from a simple cucumber tomato salad that you can prepare in minutes to a homemade sauce that cooks for hours until it’s just right.
This recipe is that happy medium where you get a ton of freshness and flavor without spending a whole day developing it. Fresh tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and peppers will blow away any sauce you can find in a jar or a can.
The type of tomato you use is up to you and what you decided to grow this season. I’ve used Roma, cherry, and heirloom for this recipe and they all came out great. You can combine any number of them too, it is really hard to make this sauce not taste great.
I started out by picking 5 heirloom tomatoes about the size of a baseball… they weren’t humongous but they were a good size. We like having a saucy pasta so having too much sauce is never a problem in my family. I cut the tomatoes in wedges while I got my pan nice and hot and added a fair amount of oil to it. Once the oil is hot then I added the tomato wedges, whole garlic cloves, and yellow onion.
Once the tomatoes, onion, and garlic have softened and the tomatoes have broken down then it’s time to add all of these ingredients into a blender. Blend up the sauce really well until the sauce is smooth. Sometimes, I will just pulse the sauce until it’s smooth but still has a little texture to it.
Add, peppers to the pan and heat them until they soften a bit. Hot or sweet peppers will work, it is all preference.. our garden this year was unpredictable, some of the peppers were mild and some would have you running for water. I find a little heat kick in your sauce is a nice touch.
Poor the sauce from the blender back into the pan and continue to heat it over low heat. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, chili flake, fennel seed, and Italian seasoning and simmer for about twenty minutes to allow the sauce to develop its flavor.
Taste the sauce to make sure there is enough salt and pepper and then use it to make your favorite pasta dish, and don’t forget to overload it with some fresh basil and grated parmesan or pecorino romano.
Fresh Garden Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 5 whole Heirloom Tomatoes Large cut into wedges
- 1/2 Yellow Onion; Diced
- 5 cloves Garlic Leave Whole
- 2 Garden Variety Peppers Carmen or Italian Peppers
- 1 tsp Italian Seasoning Any brand, they are all very similar
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
- 1/2 tsp Fennel Seed
- Pinch Red Chili Flake
- 1/2 tsp Salt More to Taste
Instructions
- Heat a pan over high heat and coat with a thick layer of olive oil.
- Lower heat to medium and add tomatoes, garlic, and onions to the pan. Cook these ingredients for about fifteen minutes, or until the onions have softened and the tomatoes have begun to turn into more of a thin sauce than a bunch of tomatoes.
- Pour these ingredients into a blender/ robo coupe and blend until smooth. Set aside,
- In the pan, over medium heat cook the peppers until they have slightly softened.
- Pour the blender ingredients into the pan and add all other ingredients.
- Once the sauce comes to a simmer, lower the heat and cook for an additional 20 minutes allowing the sauce to develop its flavor.
Notes
