Roasted Garlic Marinara

Next up with my roma tomatoes was to make marinara sauce. I make mine a little differently. Here’s how I do it:

I started by washing and quartering my roma tomatoes, and chopping up my onions.

I sprayed two quarter sheet pans with cooking spray and added the tomatoes and onions and sprinkled some peeled garlic cloves on top.

I roasted them in a 400 degree oven until they were cooked through and starting to brown.

I have been making this sauce as my own tomatoes have ripened and had several containers of sauce in the freezer. I took these out to thaw so that I could can everything at the same time.

I put the newly cooked tomatoes and onions through the food mill.

I put all the sauce (fresh and frozen) in a large pot and simmered it for about 45 minutes with several stems of fresh basil.

I placed a colander over a large bowl and strained out the basil leaves and stems. I put the sauce back in the pot and brought it back up to a simmer and cooked until it was the right consistency. In the meantime, I prepped my jars and lids and brought my canner up to temp.

I put 2 tbsp. lemon juice and 1 tsp salt in each of the quart jars and filled the jars with sauce leaving a 1/4″ head space. I added the lids and processed them for 40 minutes. (Pints process for 35 minutes.) I removed them from the canner and let them cool completely.

I removed the rings, wiped the lids and jars, labelled them and put them away.

Pizza Sauce:

I use this exact same sauce for my pizza sauce, I just can it in really little jars. To get the salt and lemon juice right, I measure how much sauce I have and add the juice and salt accordingly. I can it in 1/2 cup jars which is perfect for pizza for the two of us.

I still have about 30 lbs of tomatoes to can. I don’t know what I was thinking.