Tinfoil Chef

I’ve been guilty of using canned spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce as a base to make the actual sauce that we end up using. Circumstances finally caught up with me however recently. I was all geared up to make the spaghetti sauce when I discovered that the cupboard had experienced some serious weight loss, the canned sauce that I’ve always used as a base was gone. Ditto the tomato sauce that I’ve used on occasion.

Fortunately I’ve been known to be a quick study when I need to be and after spending some time with a search engine and looking at various tomato sauce and spaghetti sauce recipes, I settled on this combination of several things I found and one or two that I’ve been doing all along.

First comes the tomato sauce which serves as the base. Since I didn’t have any fresh tomatoes I opened four cans of diced tomatoes and sent them on a merry journey in the food processor to render them into a sorta thick semi-liquid state. I did “cheat” a bit and added a 6oz can of tomato paste as well.

Then I put that in a largish saucepan with a cup of water and cooked them over a medium heat, stirring frequently until they cook down and get thicker … roughly about 45 minutes to an hour or until it’s thick and smooth.

This sauce can be put in a tightly sealed container and frozen for up to a year or so if you make a large enough batch of it.

You can also make a tomato paste by continuing to cook on a low heat, stirring frequently to keep the sauce from scorching until it thickens to a paste. This can also be frozen in sealed containers for up to a year or so.

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