The home gardener’s favorite food crop is, hands down, the tomato. If you’re like most gardeners, you probably planted more tomato plants than you needed in hopes of getting a bumper crop. Visions of BLTs and fresh tomato sandwiches fill your dreams (my favorite is fresh homemade bread with mayonnaise and thick tomato slices sprinkled with garlic salt — yum!).
But then the season wears on and you find that you’ve exhausted your family’s patience with all. these. tomatoes. Even with Caprese and Panzanella salads, Gazpacho, bruschetta, and salsa, there are still tomatoes sitting on every available flat surface.
This just means it’s time to make sauce! Tomato sauce can use up several pounds of tomatoes at a time. It freezes and also cans well for long-term storage to use later in soups, stews, meatloaf, chili, and pizza.
If you didn’t grow your own tomatoes, you can still take advantage of this recipe with fresh farmer’s market tomatoes. Jo Robinson, author of Eating on the Wild Side, says that smaller tomatoes have more nutrition. Deep red and dark purple tomatoes have more antioxidants than yellow or orange ones, and not only that, but cooking and canning tomatoes into sauce or paste actually increases the nutrition as well as the flavor!
This tomato sauce recipe benefits nutritionally from the addition of homemade bone broth. I am always looking for ways to get more broth into myself and my family. A staple healing agent in diets like GAPS and SCD, broth has been shown in research to support bone and joint/cartilage health; support healing in many auto-immune conditions; promote healthy skin; and aid recovery from acute and chronic illnesses and infections.
Dr. Pottenger, a research contemporary of Dr. Weston Price, wrote about the ability of gelatin, found abundantly in good broth, to make foods more easily digestible and absorbable. If you haven’t read the new book Nourishing Broth by Sally Fallon Morell and Kaayla T. Daniel, you will learn even more about how broth is capable of enhancing our body’s ability to extract nutrition from what we eat.
Read more information on making homemade healing broth here and homemade perpetual stock here.
According to Jo Robinson, there are two compounds in garlic (one an enzyme and one a protein) that need to combine in order to create the amazing nutrient called allisum. This is the compound responsible for all of the healing attributes found in the studies done on garlic. The act of slicing, crushing, or pressing the garlic activates the formation of allisum, and if you allow your crushed or sliced garlic to rest for 10 minutes you will get the peak amount. It also makes allisum heat-resistant, so this will ensure that your final broth is even more nutritious.
Fresh Tomato Sauce with Nourishing Bone Broth
This tomato sauce recipe benefits nutritionally from the addition of homemade bone broth. Makes 2 quarts pureed sauce.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 4 cloves garlic pressed (let sit for 10 minutes)
- 1 small onion diced
- 6 pounds tomatoes fresh and very ripe
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley chopped
- 1/2 cup red wine
- 1 cup chicken broth *
- 2 teaspoons marjoram fresh or 1 teaspoon dried minced
- 2 teaspoons rosemary fresh, minced or 1 teaspoon dried
- 2 teaspoons sea salt divided
- 1 pinch evaporated cane juice or other sweetener (optional)
Instructions
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Wash and chop the tomatoes.
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Skin and seed them if you prefer. (Jo Robinson says the skin and seeds are the most nutritious parts of a tomato so if you can stand the texture, leave them in.)
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Heat a large, heavy-bottom pot over medium heat, and add the oil, onion, and garlic.
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Sauté about 8 minutes until the onion is translucent.
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Add the chopped tomatoes, parsley, wine, broth, marjoram, and rosemary.
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Bring everything to a gentle simmer and cook, uncovered, for about 4 hours.
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Stir the mixture often.
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It will reduce quite a bit.
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At the end of the cooking time, add 1 teaspoon of the sea salt and pinch of sugar.
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Stir well and taste.
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Add the remaining salt if desired.
What’s your favorite way to eat (or preserve) tomatoes?
...without giving up the foods you love or spending all day in the kitchen!
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Sarah Meaders says
This sounds wonderful! If I don’t want to use red wine, what should use in it’s stead?
Lee says
The wine adds another dimension of flavor, but if you prefer you can just leave it out and increase the tomato by that amount.
Wendy says
How long and at what pressure for canning? As this is low acid I am assuming it isn’t safe for water bath canning?
Lee says
Personally I have used water bath method for 30 min. I do not have a pressure canner so can’t advise.
Ruth Ortiz says
Hi, do you still add the lemon juice to can in water bath?