I made my first batch of sauce last weekend. The tomato plants have struggled along and I needed to do something with what I had but it was not enough. I went to a farm stand on Saturday and bought a box of “seconds” for $15 and started the 4-5 hour process of making sauce. A friend of mine wants me to teach her how to can tomatoes so I wrote down quantities and steps this time. Usually I just do it and don’t follow a recipe however it is hard to tell someone else how much of each ingredient to have on hand!
The garlic, onions, basil, oregano, carrots, squash, eggplant, and about a third of the tomatoes are from my garden. The purchased tomatoes and peppers come from a farm close to Gettysburg, PA so I am saying this is slow sauce.
This process takes awhile and it seems like I use a ton of pots, pans, utensils, etc so the end result is a messy kitchen. Thank goodness the cleaning crew came on Monday though I am still finding tomato splatters in the kitchen. The pot is 12 quarts and just eyeballing it at this point, I thought I had 8 quarts.
I finished the process on Tuesday with a hot water canning bath. And ended up with 9 quarts, I processed 7 quarts as that is the max the canner holds. The rest will go into lasagna as requested by my son before he returns to school.

Fresh out of the canner
Here is the recipe, documented mainly for my benefit, so maybe I can repeat it!
Tomato Sauce
- 36 cups peeled and roughly chopped tomatoes. These were a mixture of Brandywine, San Marzano, Cherokee Purple, Yellow, Beefsteak, Stripey and Amish Paste
- 1/2 large chopped cayenne pepper (will cut back on this in next batch)
- 3 large chopped green bell peppers
- 3 large chopped carrots
- 2 cups chopped onion
- I small chopped eggplant
- 1 small chopped yellow squash
I chop everything in the food processor and then sauted it in olive oil until soft. I combined the tomatoes and vegies in the 12 quart pot to bring to a boil. Then I added the following: (all the measurements are estimates as I did not measure anything)
- 6 tbls black pepper
- 3 tbls onion powder
- 2 tbls garlic powder
- 2 tbls smoked paprika
- 2 tbls cayenne pepper
- 2 tbls white pepper
- 1/8 cup pickling sale (no iodine)
- 1/4-1/3 cup fresh chopped basil
- 1/4 cup fresh chopped oregano
- tomato paste, added later to help thicken sauce
I brought this to a boil and then simmered it a couple of hours to reduce.