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There are not many recipes that I actually come up with on my own, but this one is mine! My husband loves gardening, and starts bringing in bushels of tomatoes in July (he just brought in our first bushel!) For the last several years we've had enough homemade pasta sauce to never use Ragu thanks to his garden. So if you notice me grabbing the canned stuff, I'm usually sending it to the food pantry!
Here's our homemade sauce recipe, and it works great either canned or frozen. (Just freeze in plastic containers and thaw when ready to use if you're afraid of canning – I'm hoping James will help me show how to can spaghetti sauce later in the summer if you've never tried it before!) Once you've had this it'll be hard to go back!
Here's what you'll need . . .
1 small can tomato paste
Muir Glen Stockpiled, if not let's hope that Coupons.com resets the $1/1 Muir Glen July 1st!
1/2 cup onion chopped
Vidalia Onions on sale $1.29/lb.
1/4 cup carrot chopped (optional)
2-3 green peppers chopped
6 tomatoes peeled (read through to the bottom on how to peel them if you've never done this before!)
From your garden or Premium Tomatoes On Sale at Publix $1.49/lb.
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. salt
1/2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. Italian Seasoning
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. onion powder
Chop onions, carrots and peppers and saute in oil until tender. Meanwhile peel tomatoes (see directions below). Add tomatoes to onion mixture and all other ingredients – bring to boiling, then simmer uncovered 30 minutes. Add additional salt, pepper, and sugar to taste. (I like my spaghetti sauce sweet!)
Serve over BOGO Mueller's Pasta (BOGO $1.29). Enjoy!
If you've never peeled tomatoes (I hadn't until my husband started pestering me about doing something with all the tomatoes he kept bringing in!), here's how to do it. It's a little messy but the results are worth the mess!
Thanks to I Heart Publix and Two Thrifty Sisters for the coupon matchups. And be sure to visit $5 Dinner Mom for even more great bargain meal deals!
This looked like such a good recipe. We are trying to do the Mediterranean, so I substituted red wine for the sugar and added the carrots and some basil. Then baked a spaghetti squash instead of pasta. Yum.
So glad you were able to make it work for you Susan! 🙂
Italian seasoning ? Like a seasiong packet?
It does take a lot of tomatoes to make sauce! I think this probably made one large Ragu jar size (as you can tell I’m guestimating 🙂 ) – we had it for dinner and then I froze the rest because I didn’t have time to can it, I should have checked the measurements (I’ll check the next time we make it!)
As far as the seeds – one thing I’ve done, especially when my tomatoes are really ripe and full of liquid – is press out some of the water and seeds so that they’re not so “seedy”. I asked my husband and he’s never really noticed the seeds, but I think they’re in there (he doesn’t notice much!)
Hope that helps – let me know if it works for you!
Yum the spaghetti sauce looks delicious! I do the square foot gardening method and have 7 or 8 tomato plants different varieties. Last year I made spaghetti sauce and used about 20 tomatoes (they looked about the same size you have in your picture) , and it barley made enough to fill to jars. Maybe I am missing something or it just takes a lot of tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce! How many cups/oz etc does your recipe yield?
And, do you have a trick on getting the seeds out of the tomatoes? My husband did not like the sauce I made last year with seeds in the sauce 🙁