Roasted Tomato Sauce for Freezing

This is true clean out the garden recipe, gather all your tomatoes any variety will do. A truly easy way to make delicious tomato sauce. If you have a couple of peppers, garlic, onions  and herbs throw them in also

Recipe:
Suggested amount of vegetables

• 2+ lbs. large tomatoes (any variety of what ever you have is fine)
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• Bell Peppers (your choice on the amount)
• 1 large Onion or a few small ones
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian herb seasoning or fresh herbs like basil
• 1⁄2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt (omit if you want)
• 1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

Roasted Tomato Sauce for Freezing:

• Preheat your oven to 425. 
• Clean your tomatoes and remove any unpleasant spots and place them on a rimmed baking tray. Use whatever fresh tomatoes you have handy.
• Cutting the tomatoes will depend on their size and the toughness of their core. Cherry tomatoes can be left whole, but halve most of the plums and just cut out the green core. The larger tomatoes, can be cored and cut down to size so those pieces were comparable to the halved plum tomatoes.
• You’ll also need a couple of small onions, a handful of basil, or dried Italian herbs  Add to this a couple of peppers, from the garden. Slice the onions and quarter the peppers, removing the seeds. Wash and clean the basil or any herbs.
  
• Place everything on a rimmed baking sheet.

• Drizzle with a little olive oil, just enough so that they don’t stick. Add a little at a time, and then use your clean hands to simply roll all of the pieces around to mix them up so that they all have a little oil. A little salt is optional here.

Bake uncovered for about 45 minutes – 1hr.
NOTE: This will vary somewhat depending on the size of your pieces and the amount of moisture that your tomatoes have. The level of roasting is a personal choice…if you don’t like charred food, remove them before that happens.

The skins of the tomatoes are easily removed once they are roasted but you don't have to remove the skins.  If you are putting the tomatoes in the food processor or blender the skins will be gone when you blend them.

• Spoon everything into a pan and use an immersion blender to pulverize everything. You can also put the mixture in a blender or food processor and pulse. It will depend on how chunky you like your sauce as to how much you blend it.
• Put it up in freezer bags and your set to go.
• You may also put the sauce in jars and then into the freezer. The best jars are ones with no shoulders (wide mouth jars) like the picture below. The jars with shoulders have a chance of breaking when the ingredients inside freeze and expand.
  

A friend of mine at the Farmer's Market always makes her sauce this way. She cooks it in the early morning or late evening so it does not heat up the house so much in the summer. That is a good tip!
Enjoy!
Tamara