That is a little impending doom-ish. I just mean it’s the last way you’ll ever make a ragu, marinara, chili, pasta sauce, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, whatever sauce…. Ever! There’s no easier or tastier way to start this out. Trust me, if you scan back into my blog, you’ll see I’ve done everything from using cans to calling it “roasted” when nothing was roasted. See?
It’s lunacy. I mean, I love to see my progress, as a home chef, through this blog. I wouldn’t dare call myself a “chef” or use the word in reference to myself if I didn’t look back at my processes and grow in my cooking and my ways of eating. We shouldn’t stay stagnant in the way’s that we eat. We should evolve. Always evolve.
I went from filling giant pots with boxes of chopped tomatoes, peppers, onions and celery, just to end up with a sauce I was pleased with, in taste, but not in consistency or versatility.
This, I can truly say, is my most versatile, easiest sauce.
I’m proud of it’s simplicity and while I’d never claim originality, I only hope to light the way for others who did things the way I use to, and show them that opening a can isn’t the easiest option. That taking the time, on a day that allows, and planning for meals ahead, makes a world of difference in the way you feel, the way you cook and the meals you make.
There’s about as many ways to make this as you’d like. The point of the blog is really, the technique. The roasting. It cooks, but without annihilating. Like my aforementioned post. Which basically, if you cook the marinara, ragu, sauce, or whatever you want to call it, as you’re making it, thoroughly, then when you cook it in a dish later, it’s being pummeled with heat. The nutritional content is null and the taste is void. Avoid the noid. Wait, what?
Anyway, it’s just TOO much. This way, I feel like the tomatoes break down, just enough. The charred skin of the veggies is a welcome addition to all dishes I use this in, so I don’t de-skin or seed. I like my foods whole. I use this in chili, jambalaya and other things I don’t have links to, yet…
INGREDIENTS:
4lbs of Roma tomatoes, stem scars removed. Really, whatever’s on sale, because I get these for either 2 or 3 lbs for $.99.
2 white onions, quartered.
2-3 heads of garlic. I love garlic, and I pile it on.
2 big red bells, half’d.
4 stalks of celery, sliced thin, but not too thin, set aside for later.
1 tbs salt
I don’t season it with oregano and basil, like I would a pasta sauce. I don’t season it any particular way, except for a little salt and pepper. I add seasonings to the dish that I’m adding THIS to, so that the taste doesn’t change or morph in the freezer. It just stays it’s basic ingredients.
Use a metal baking dish, NOT like I did in this photo, or a tin foil, disposable baking dish, again, NOT like I did in this photo, to roast your veggies, everything except the celery, which, while this is roasting, can be sautee’d up on the side with a bit of olive oil, or if you’re a baddie like me, some bacon grease. Because, well, duh. It’s BACON GREASE.
*********I have to post a warning here, about Pyrex. Apparently, it’s happened before, so says the internet. But, I usually roast veggies in my 90 year old grandmothers hand me down Pyrex dish. I line it in tin foil and roast away, under the broiler, to my hearts content. Not during this dinner, but during a dinner I had after this was posted, I was roasting green chiles, took the dish out to flip the chile and the dish exploded all over. I was cut, really badly and needed stitches. Which I did not go get, I finished dinner because a friend of ours was fresh off hiking the Appalachian Trail and “trail-doctored” me up and after 4 hours and a house full of blood, dinner resumed. I now use tinfoil, disposable baking dishes. Lesson learned. Don’t cut your foot off like me. We bartenders needs the feets.**************
Now that’s done, let’s…
This next step is, really, really hard.
Bag, tag and freeze.
Simple.
I also make a red onion version, that I’ll make a lesser version of, when tomatoes go crazy on sale, that I use just for turkey pastas and shrimp pastas that’s a bit sweeter, due to that red onion. Either way, yum.
Do you still buy sauce out of the jar? If not, what was your motivation to stop and make your own?
