Fresh Sauce From Garden Tomatoes

It's sauce making day in our house. Actually it's day two. The first day was coring and cutting up the tomatoes, storing them in huge stainless steel bowls over ice in our coolers. This allows the tomatoes to loose a lot of their natural liquid.
On day two it's the processing the onions and sauteing them in olive oil. Then comes taking the cut tomatoes and making a puree in the blender, followed by running the mixture through the food mill. That puree then goes into the large 24 quart pots to get cooked down for approximately 3 hours or so.
I previously posted a canning and preserving video with our recipe for doing this: Canning Fruits and Vegetables Video.
After the video is the complete recipe. Here are some of the pictures from today's sauce making.

These two 24 quart pots fit nicely on the six burner Viking Range.

The onions getting sauteed in some olive oil.

There were 3 large stainless steel bowls of cut tomatoes.

The cut tomatoes get blended up to a puree.

Then they get run through the food mill which removes a lot of the seeds.

When I spotted this food mill and the name on the box said "Harold's Kitchen" I had to buy it.

My  husband and I are having a contest to see who guessed how many quarts of tomato sauce we would get from this whole process.  I guessed 22 and he guessed 27. Let's see who is closest. Well all bets are off essentially neither of us hit the nail on the head; however I was closer as the final count was 19 quarts. Here are some more photos.

And next weekend we take what we have left in the garden which will hopefully ripen and we will procure more from a large grower here in Connecticut.

I hope that our method is one that you will try. As I pointed out above there are more instructions if you click on the link.

Bon Appetit!