by Debora Chaves

Created on: May 20, 2008

How to Make Easy Homemade Italian Tomato Sauce
Authentic Italian Recipes Passed Down from Nana and Ma to Me!

It really is so simple to make your own tomato sauce, and it's so much tastier then "store bought" tomato sauce in a jar!

It's economical too, when you buy your ingredients as you see them on sale and keep them on hand in your pantry. Having the ingredients on hand means you can whip up a tomato sauce anytime you think of it. It can be as quick and easy as a fresh one-skillet sauce to use with cooked vegetables and chicken for a light summertime meal. Or it can be a slowly simmered tomato sauce chock full of homemade meatballs, sweet or hot Italian sausages, chunks of boneless pork loin or homemade braciole.

Either way, next time you're home on a chilly or rainy weekend, make your own tasty tomato sauce. Your boyfriend, husband, even the kids will just love it! And they'll love YOU for making it!

Buying The Staples to Make Homemade Italian Tomato Sauce

I have made tomato sauce from fresh-from-my-garden plum tomatoes (the Roma variety) in the past. Perhaps I may have derived a kind of "Martha Stewart-like" sense of accomplishment from having peeled and ground my own garden grown tomatoes for my sauce. But in reality, I have found it's just not worth the extra work and bother to EVER do that again! In the end, sauce made this way tastes no different from a sauce using canned tomatoes. It also requires A LOT of tomatoes to make an average size sauce.
But if you still want to give it a try, the basic process is this: first, you must plunge the whole tomato into boiling hot water for a few seconds to be able to peel off the skin. Then remove the seeds of each tomato as much as you can, before processing them to a ground-up consistency.
What a pain in the neck! What a mess it makes, too!

Instead, buy canned tomatoes. Every so often you'll see canned ground peeled tomatoes on sale in the supermarket, and this is the time to stock up. The usual sale price is about a dollar for a 28 ounce can, which is the size you need. The best price I've paid is 79 cents a can, but I haven't seen that for a while. Normally, the price per can is about $1.50 or so. Buy two to four cans at least; four cans will make 4 smaller sauces approximately the size of those "jar" sauces, or 2 large sauces. A large sauce is better if you want to add meat to it.

Be sure to only buy good, "name brand" canned tomatoes, because there IS a difference in taste. It's not necessary, although it's fine, to

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