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On the subject of Tomato Sauce
Sep. 20th, 2021 09:24 amOk, I'm a tomato sauce snob of sorts (that's tomato ketchup to benighted Americans not passata or sugo). When I grew up either you either ate Rosella or Heinz tomato sauce and whichever you were used to the other tasted weird and unpleasant. Later there were other brands like Masters or Fountain which are acceptable to varying degrees. Recently I picked up a bottle of Maggie Beer's Tomato Sauce which I had high hopes for seeing as how Maggie is a well known Australian foodie icon, but it was terrible. Thin and acidic with almost no spiciness (spicy is not the same as chilli infested).
I'm fully in the camp that tomato sauce belongs in the pantry in the way the God and the CWA intended. If your bottle of tomato sauce reads "refrigerate after opening" then it is an inferior product and should be binned immediately. Likewise if it makes spurious claims about tomato ketchup being thicker than tomato sauce then it is full of gelling agents and not worth the space on your shelves.
Basic tomato sauce is Tomato, apple, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Over the years I've made sauce using fresh and canned tomatoes as well as with passata. All work well as long as the base fruit was good to begin with. Onion is there to bolster the umami flavour of the tomatoes and provide extra structure to the sauce. Most recipes include some garlic as well. Some recipes call for the apples to be peeled and cored but that is missing the point. The apple is not there to provide sweetness (lost in the sugar) or to provide apple flavour (totally lost) but to provide pectin to make your sauce thicker. I suppose you could add a small amount of pectin containing sugar but watch the quantity otherwise your sauce might set. The vinegar should be a good quality pickling grade vinegar. Pick a good one because it will come through in the taste of the finished sauce. I like a little mode depth of flavour than white sugar provides so I use raw sugar but you could also use brown sugar or honey. Salt needs to be not too much and the spice mix is to taste.
The batch I made yesterday used 1 litre of home made passata from March. 2 onions and 2 apples (about 400g of each ) chopped roughly. A half cup of raw sugar and the same of cider vinegar and 2 teaspoons of salt. Spices were about an inch of ginger chopped, a blade of mace and a teaspoon each of black pepper, cloves and mustard seed. Pressure cooked for 20 minutes and then blitzed with a hand blender and pushed through a mesh strainer with a spoon into a saucepan. At this point check the seasoning and adjust the balance to your taste. The puree was then simmered until it was thick enough, and then bottled and hot water processed to give a nice vacuum seal.
I'm fully in the camp that tomato sauce belongs in the pantry in the way the God and the CWA intended. If your bottle of tomato sauce reads "refrigerate after opening" then it is an inferior product and should be binned immediately. Likewise if it makes spurious claims about tomato ketchup being thicker than tomato sauce then it is full of gelling agents and not worth the space on your shelves.
Basic tomato sauce is Tomato, apple, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt and spices. Over the years I've made sauce using fresh and canned tomatoes as well as with passata. All work well as long as the base fruit was good to begin with. Onion is there to bolster the umami flavour of the tomatoes and provide extra structure to the sauce. Most recipes include some garlic as well. Some recipes call for the apples to be peeled and cored but that is missing the point. The apple is not there to provide sweetness (lost in the sugar) or to provide apple flavour (totally lost) but to provide pectin to make your sauce thicker. I suppose you could add a small amount of pectin containing sugar but watch the quantity otherwise your sauce might set. The vinegar should be a good quality pickling grade vinegar. Pick a good one because it will come through in the taste of the finished sauce. I like a little mode depth of flavour than white sugar provides so I use raw sugar but you could also use brown sugar or honey. Salt needs to be not too much and the spice mix is to taste.
The batch I made yesterday used 1 litre of home made passata from March. 2 onions and 2 apples (about 400g of each ) chopped roughly. A half cup of raw sugar and the same of cider vinegar and 2 teaspoons of salt. Spices were about an inch of ginger chopped, a blade of mace and a teaspoon each of black pepper, cloves and mustard seed. Pressure cooked for 20 minutes and then blitzed with a hand blender and pushed through a mesh strainer with a spoon into a saucepan. At this point check the seasoning and adjust the balance to your taste. The puree was then simmered until it was thick enough, and then bottled and hot water processed to give a nice vacuum seal.
