Category Archives: Cooking

Love people, cook them tasty food

Tomato Sauce (Italian)

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I did a small test batch of tomato sauce a while back and was pretty happy with the results.  I tried to go big and make all the effort worthwhile.  While the results were quite good, I made a major mistake in the tomato selection.

Tomato selection is important

The large Tennessee tomatoes I got were good, and very reasonable in price.  There were also quite watery.  Not all tomatoes are created equal when it comes to sauce production.  An article I found after the fact has some good recommendations.   Though we differ on some techniques, I think he has the right idea on tomato selection.  My first batch was with roma tomatoes, and yielded more sauce despite being much less fruit to begin with.

In short, use roma tomatoes.  They are cheap and delicious and make good sauce.  That having been said, the new food mill did a bang up job of plowing through 25lbs of tomatoey goodness.  I am highly impressed with that tool.  I just wish it took up less storage space.  The other win was my tomato coring tool.  It does a fantastic job of getting the tough stem area out as well as any badly bruised or damaged parts.  It is a quick and efficient tool

I did 25lbs of tomatoes, 2 large cloves of garlic, a good haul off my basil plant (~1 cup chopped) and a few tablespoons of dried italian spices.  Next time I will wait till the sauce is closer to being cooked down to add the spice ingredients.  The yield was initially over 10 quarts of tomato sauce.  Once cooked down (8hrs!!!!!!!) to a good consistency, it was more like 3 qts.  That is a lot of water to cook out… never again.  I was going to can, but I think we can eat this as dinner for the week and freeze what little will be left over.

Lessons learned, that is what life is like.

25lb box o tomatoes
It is like a melon baller with teeth
Take a little garlic
Chop it up
Add basil
I boiled them in 3 big batches
My lovely assistant running the mill
I ended up with a full stock pot
Plus about 4 quarts of sauce
Dry left overs
All that sauce reduced

-Chase

Apple Butter

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Earlier I turned a pile of pink lady apples into sauce.  Half the sauce got canned and the other half went into the crock pot.  View post here on making applesauce.

The directions I originally got had the whole process taking less than 12 hours.  My first attempt took over a day.  They had recommended going low and being really careful not to burn the apple butter.  My crock pot was obtained well used (thanks mom!) at a garage sale when I got my first apartment.  It is old, at least one decade, and maybe multiple.  At any rate, it appears to run at a lower temp than the Pick Your Own directions would indicate.  Your mileage may vary.

Directions:

  1. Fill crock pot 2/3 full with applesauce, add 1-2 cups sugar and cinnamon to taste.
  2. Add remaining applesauce till crock is full.
  3. Set crock pot to High with lid propped up to let moisture out, stir occasionally.
  4. If you leave the house or go to bed, set to Low with lid still propped.
  5. Sauce will darken and reduce in volume.  Keep going till the desired consistency is achieved.

My crock pot took about 9 hours on high through the day, and then another 8 or so on low over night.  In the morning it looked pretty done.  I left it on low till I could eat breakfast and get around to canning.  It seems pretty forgiving on time, so don’t stress.

The sugar can be varied or removed all together if you are looking for a sweeter or healthier spread.  Cinnamon is a personal preference, but I used probably 2 tablespoons.

This batch yielded 9 half pint jars of apple butter.  Minus the numerous sample scoops I took for quality control… and breakfast.  The sound of jars sealing once out of the bath is a sound of pure joy!  Happy little pops as the seal comes down.

Freshly made applesauce
20 hours later.. APPLE BUTTER! And a good smelling house.
Place in jars and boil 5 minutes
9 half pints later
NOOOOOOOM!!!

-Chase

 

Applesauce

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I did a batch of applesauce about a month back, but turned 100% of it into apple butter.  In tasting some of the sauce, I realized how good just it is on its own.  I plan to make some more apple butter with this batch, but first I want some sauce to can for myself.

The short version of making applesauce is this: core and chop apples, boil them till soft, and run that through a food mill.  TADA, applesauce.  Add cinnamon if desired.  It is pretty darn good as is.  Cook it down with a little cinnamon and sugar in a slow cooker for apple butter.  More on that in another post.  More detailed information can be found at Pick your own’s website.  They have good information on canning in general.

Almost none of this requires special tools, per say, but they can help make the job a lot easier.  The one tool that most people don’t have is a food mill.  The food mill takes the boiled apples and smushes/separates the pulpy centers from the skin.  The food mill I have is this model: Victorio VPK250.  I highly recommend it.  For the price it seems reasonably well built, and it can churn through some apples like nobody’s business.  An apple cutter is cheap and makes processing the raw apples fast.

Enough talk, roll that saucy footage.

25lb of Pink Ladies
Chopping apples is quick with the cutter
This part smells amazing
Turn the crank, and out comes the sauce
Dry leftovers from the mill, and boiled apple water
Half went to the crock pot, half for canning
Oops, I printed my old apple butter labels!

The water the apples were boiled in smelled great.  I thought it might be worth saving and drinking, but it had only a mild bland apple flavor.  Maybe if I boil it down it will taste more intense.  I should look up how to make apple cider.

Based on my past two runs of it seems to require about 1.5lb of apples to yield a pint (16oz) of applesauce.  This 25lb run filled my crockpot for applebutter, with enough left over for 9 pints of applesauce.  Seems how my canner can only hold 9 pints at a time, this worked out perfectly!  Next time, apple butter!

-Chase