My pasta sauce has always been a true labor of love filled with wonderful vegetables from my garden. I have been making this pasta sauce for over 10 years now and as I have grown and learned better cooking and canning skills my sauce has only gotten better. I start by growing my own tomatoes and the type that I use are called San Marzano’s.
I take these tomatoes and after cooking them run them through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins. Once all the thinner sauce is collected I spend hours reducing the sauce down until it is nice and thick and this takes a lot of observation and stirring to ensure that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. Once this is accomplished I add all of the various ingredients which include Italian sausage if I want it to be a meat sauce, eggplant, onions, fresh Portabella mushrooms, red and green bell peppers, sweet basil and oregano grown in my garden, garlic and sea salt.
Typically I do not add sugar to the mixture until I cook the sauce on the stove top that way it gives me the opportunity to use an artificial sweetener if I choose to. This year I made and pressure canned 25 quarts of my lovely pasta sauce with Italian sausage in it. As it cooked the smell was amazing as well as the taste. Hopefully my sauce will inspire everyone out there to grow lovely pasta sauce tomatoes in their gardens next year and to create your own tradition of sauce making.
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