Basic Tomato Sauce

The famed Tomato Sauce is the base for a bunch of my favorite recipes, most prominent of which are Pasta in Tomato Sauce and Pizza. You need to make this to take the a bunch of recipes I will post in the next few days, and yes, one of them is the awesome Pasta in Tomato Sauce (Arrabiata if you wanna call it that). I think amateurs will find this one really helpful primarily because the majority of recipes on the internet typically use canned tomatoes, and I am not a fan of using anything canned. Plus they aren’t as easily available around where I live.

You’ll need about 10 Medium Sized Tomatoes to make enough sauce to eventually make enough Pasta sauce for two. Oh! And be very picky with the tomatoes here. You want firm ones without any blemishes on the skin.

Chop each tomato into half and line them up seed-side down in a big saucepan. Sprinkle some salt on top of the tomatoes, put the pan on medium heat and cover it. You’ll need to constantly monitor the tomatoes and make sure they don’t burn. Once they’re squidgy or super-soft to touch with a spatula, they’re done. This is about a 15-20 minute process.

Take the tomatoes, about 4 pieces at a time, with a spoon and put them on a strainer, which ideally sits above a big bowl (You don’t want to waste the juice now do you?). You’ll need to mash the juice out of the tomatoes now. I recommend you use a whisk and mash each tomato and extract the juice out of it. Repeat the whole thing till all that’s left in the strainer are seeds, bits of the tomato skin and excess pulp.

Your basic tomato sauce is done. If you would like to preserve it and use it later too, add about a tablespoon of vinegar and about a table spoon of salt into the sauce and mix really well. Simple!