Roasted Garlic and Onion Marinara Sauce

I planted San Marzano tomatoes this year to ensure that I would have plenty of tomatoes to make homemade sauce and canned tomatoes. They are living up to their billing and I made the first batch of sauce today.

Unfortunately, they still aren’t coming in all at the same time, so I have had to do this first step about 5 times–putting the sauce in the freezer each time until I have enough to can.

I started the process by washing and quartering all my ripe tomatoes.

For this huge bowl of tomatoes, I used 3 sliced medium yellow onions, and about 20 garlic cloves and a few tablespoons of olive oil.

I stirred well to ensure that everything was well coated with oil and put them in two large sheet pans.

I have a “roast” setting on my top oven and I set that one to 350 degrees. I set my bottom oven for “convection bake” at 375 degrees. I roasted them for about 45 minutes.

I ran all of this through my OXO food mill with the fine blade in it. The best part of San Marzano tomatoes is that they aren’t super juicy, so you don’t end up cooking the sauce for hours to thicken it.

I poured my defrosted sauce and this sauce into a large stockpot and added a bunch of basil branches–not just the leaves–to the pot.

I let this simmer on the stovetop for about 45 minutes. In the meantime, I put water in my quart jars and put them in the microwave for 25 minutes on high until the water was boiling. I also got my canner about 2/3 full of water and up to boiling.

When the sauce had been simmering for 45 minutes, I removed the basil carefully, and squeezed the sauce off the leaves and added it back to the pot.

I brought the sauce back up to a low simmer. I removed my jars from the microwave and poured the hot water over my rings and bands. I put 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and 1 tsp of salt into each quart jar. I ladled the sauce into the jars, leaving 1/4″ headspace, and screwed on the lids and rings. Once I had all the jars full, I put them in my hot water canner and brought it up to a boil and processed the quarts for 40 minutes. I made 5 quarts and had most of a quart leftover that I will keep in the freezer.

Based on how many tomatoes are still out there, I will probably be making at least a couple more batches of sauce.

And here is the vase of dahlias and gerbera daisies that I picked the other day. The dahlia in the front is a new variety for me. It is HUGE and gorgeous.