It’s early August and many Italian families are continuing the tradition of making homemade tomato sauce. Supermarkets and pop-up vegetable stands are buzzing with activity of bushels of tomatoes being loaded into pick-up trucks or crammed into the cargo space of a car. The debate continues every year about which tomato is superior for making sauce; Roma vs San Marzano! Once that is resolved (which it never will be) the next question is, which establishment sells the better tomatoes?

Of course, every family has their own way of doing it. In every discussion regarding making sauce one person tries to convince the other of the advantage of doing it their way. Some swear that tomato sauce should be made using San Marzano tomatoes, canning them raw and adding basil. Somewhere else someone is saying the opposite or some variation of different methods.

The truth is that there isn’t any one superior method. It boils down to your preference and how much work you are willing to invest now versus later when it is time to cook the sauce in the kitchen.

My family (my wife and I) have settled on pureeing the tomatoes while they are raw with no basil and then boiling the jars for 30 minutes before allowing them to cool and storing them for the season(s). To be more precise. First, we wash them using a very thorough process while inspecting and removing any unsightly tomatoes. Next, we transfer the washed tomatoes into a clean bushel where they can dry off. Then we cut them into quarters and remove the stem cap. We do this for two reasons. The first is so we can inspect them inside. You would be surprised how many times we cut one open and immediately you sniff something off! But the tomato looked perfectly fine on the outside. Secondly, it makes it easier for our machine to process the tomato. Now imagine, I know of some people who like to take shortcuts and don’t bother to cut open the tomato! Boy, that sauce must taste great!

As we cut them open we store them in a clean bushel. This gives the tomatoes time to drip away any extra water and contributes to a slightly thicker sauce. Now that they are all cut we can begin to puree them. The machine takes care of separating the skins from the sauce. Once all the sauce has been collected we will pour it into jars (any size really) and then boil them for a certain amount of time. The time required actually depends on your elevation above sea level! Best to look it up. Then we store the jars in my cold room for the upcoming year(s).

In a nutshell this is how we do it. Typically we will convert four bushels of tomatoes into sauce. This yields about 72 one litre jars and take about 4-6 hours, including the canning process, which involves mostly monitoring to determine how long the water has boiled. The drawback of doing it this way (pureeing raw tomatoes) is that the sauce likely needs to cook a little longer when it is time to prepare your meal. Also, you need a powerful machine to process raw tomatoes. And oh yeah, the other big thing is that we don’t add basil during the canning process. We like to add it fresh when we are cooking the sauce.

The other popular variation, which my parents use, is to partially cook the tomato after they have been sliced open. In batches, they transfer the tomato to a large pot, with a very small amount of water and cook the raw tomatoes just until they begin to boil. Then they use an elaborate process the try and drain away all the excess water that was extruded by the tomatoes while being boiled. This in my opinion is a lot of extra work, requires more materials and is more dangerous because now we are navigating around very hot tomato sauce. Also, they add basil at this point. Then after the jars have been filled. They are sealed and boiled once again as part of the canning process. This translates into a sauce that is a little thicker and requires a little less time to cook.

Using the raw tomato method I find that the sauce has a fresher taste and the entire process takes far less time.

There are other methods to make sauce, but the final product is generally the same; tomato puree. The only other method that is different is to can the raw chunks of tomato without pureeing them and then canning them. These are good for recipes that

The most important reason for spending the time and doing all the work is to spend time with my family. My parents will come help and my children like being in the mix as well. As long, as they get to do the job they like the best. My son likes to attend to properly separating the peels while my daughter is the jar filling specialist.

This is the sort of communal activity less people invest in. The benefits are numerous. Including the one of preserving this tradition. I’m proud that along with my wife we have successfully learned the process. Hopefully, my children will have also learned the value of making homemade tomato sauce.