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Lorrie's Delicious Homemade Marinara Sauce

Lorrie's Delicious Homemade Marinara Sauce

It's a well known fact that with successful gardening comes a large harvest, and the best way to preserve all your hard work is to, well... preserve it! Our Operations Manager, Lorrie, decided to freeze her wealthy tomato harvest this past summer in preparation for making large batches of homemade marinara sauce!

tomatoes on a wooden counter top

She froze the blanched and skinned tomatoes in gallon freezer bags; defrosting about 30 lbs of them for this recipe. Makes about 25 cups of sauce.

INGREDIENTS:
30 lbs frozen tomatoes, defrosted and drained
8 whole bulbs of garlic, peeled and separated into cloves
4 medium onions, roughly chopped
1 cup olive oil
1/2 cup dried parsley (or 1 1/2 cups fresh parsley)
1/3 cup dried oregano (or 1 cup fresh oregano)
3 TBSP dried basil (or a heavy 1/2 cup of fresh basil)
2 whole carrots, peeled and grated
1 TBSP sugar
Salt & pepper to taste (we used 3 TSP salt, 1/2 TSP pepper)

1. Place your 30 lbs of defrosted tomatoes in a large stock pot and set on medium/high heat.

Pot on stove with sauce bubbling

2. Cook your tomatoes down until most of the water has cooked away. The tomatoes will turn a rich red color and, when you stir them, the tomatoes will coat your spoon. This process took several hours for us, so fear not if it takes a while! This is something you can set on the stove to cook while you're doing something else in the kitchen. Just be sure to stir them periodically.

pot with marinara sauce

3. A quick way to peel cloves of garlic is to smash them with the flat edge of a large knife. Peel all your garlic and set the cloves aside.

smashing garlic with a knife on a cutting board in the kitchenperson at a sink peeling garlic

4. Peel and roughly chop your onions and set aside.

5 bowls with cut onion, garlic, and spices on a counterclose up of sauce in pot

5. Grate your two carrots finely.

hands grating carrot into a bowl on a kitchen  countertop

6. Add your garlic and onions to the pot, as well as olive oil. Stir and allow to cook a little longer (10-15 minutes).

close up of cut onions added to the sauce in a pothands pouring garlic from a bowl into sauce in a pothand pouring olive oil from a bottle into a pot with sauce on stoveclose up of bubbling sauce in pot with garlic and onion

6. Turn off heat and allow tomato mixture to cool enough to place in a food processor. We waited about 20-30 minutes.

7. Add in the carrots and send your tomato mixture through your food processor until it becomes velvety in texture.

food processor on kitchen counter with sauce and hands closing tophand pouring chunky sauce from a measuring cup into food processor on kitchen counterclose up of blended sauce in food processor

8. We added our dried herbs after the tomatoes had already been processed, but you can add them before processing if you prefer.

hand pouring dried oregano into pot with sauce

9. Add sugar then salt and pepper to taste.

finished blended sauce in pot

10. We chose to freeze our finished sauce in freezer-specific plastic containers, as it will be used fairly quickly.  This recipe made about 25 cups of sauce. You can also can your sauce (check out our post on canning here). Now enjoy your sauce all winter long!

sauce packed into plastic freezer containers

 

 

Marinara Sauce Recipe PDF

7 comments on Lorrie's Delicious Homemade Marinara Sauce

  • Nancy E. Sutton
    Nancy E. SuttonFebruary 11, 2019

    This looks delish!! Brings to mind something I read a long time ago on Organic Gardening… a tip to cook tomatoes ‘down’, then let them sit overnight. The liquid will have separated from the solids and can be poured off (and drunk, or used as a stock in other recipes). Saves time and stirring in boiling the liquid off. Then cook the sauce with the rest of the ingredients to desired doneness.

  • Mimi Donson
    Mimi DonsonJanuary 28, 2019

    Enjoy the seeds. Would love a printout of the recipe so I can make the sauce without the fuss of running to the computer while I’m trying to cook. Thanks! It’s a lovely idea to include recipes.

  • Laura Oldenkamp
    Laura OldenkampJanuary 24, 2019

    I like the idea of freezing tomatoes as they ripen so that sauce can be made months later when I have time. I just marked my fall calendar to do this since I am often overwhelmed with everything ripening at once, trying to deal with all of it in a real life way. Maybe I can avoid waste with this idea.

  • Jetty L.
    Jetty L.January 22, 2019

    Sounds delicious… I can smell it already! The addition of carrots was an interesting surprise. I would then omit the sugar. Since i am a fan of fennel, i would add a little of that…plus a few flakes of red pepper (for a gentle kick)

  • Keith S. Titus
    Keith S. TitusJanuary 22, 2019

    i ad my voice to the request for print out.

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