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Easy Homemade Tomato Sauce
Use this quick tomato sauce for a light pasta dinner or for preparing your favourite pizza, lasagna or cannelloni. For this sauce you can use cans of either chopped or whole plum tomatoes or the fresh one if it's tomato season.
We love to use this tomato sauce for our pizza muffins with bacon and pizza rolls with ham. Serve this sauce along our pumpkin and ham croquettes.
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If desired, pass the sauce through a food mill or chop with stick blender to get smoothier texture. If you like more rustic appearance leave it as it is.
You can easily dressed up tomato sauce by adding some mushrooms, sausages, olives, anchovies, vegetables etc.
Useful tips for making easy homemade tomato sauce
- Fresh tomatoes can be used instead of canned ones during the summertime when tomatoes are at their best. In this case, place tomatoes to a pot of boiling water and allow them to boil for 1 - 2 minutes. Remove the tomatoes carefully and place them on a plate. Allow them to cool then peel the skin away from the tomatoes. Once that's done, you can follow the recipe as described below.
- Besides canned tomatoes, this recipe calls for passata di pomodoro which is uncooked tomato puree that has been strained of seeds and skins. Some passatas are chunkier and some are smoother, depending on the brand.
How to store homemade tomato sauce
If desired, the sauce can be cooled and refrigerated up to 4 days, or frozen up to 3 months. Just pour it into plastic freezer bags or plastic containers and freeze.
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Easy Homemade Tomato Sauce
SERVES: 4 servings
COOKS IN: 45 minutes
LEVEL: Easy
INGREDIENTS
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium onion, finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
- 400g (14 ounces) can whole peeled tomatoes (pomodori pelati)
- 200ml strained tomatoes (passata di pomodoro)
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- salt & freshly ground black pepper
METHOD
- In a medium saucepan add olive oil, finely chopped onion. Fry on a medium heat until the onion becomes translucent (for about 5-6 minutes), then ad the minced garlic and fry another minutes.
- Stir in chopped tomatoes, passata di pomodoro, sugar, chopped parsley and season with salt and pepper.
- Bring the sauce to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for about 25-30 minutes. Stir occasionally so that the sauce doesn't catch on the bottom. Taste the sauce and adjust with additional seasoning. If you like more concentrated tomato flavour continue to simmer the sauce for up to 15 minutes more.
- Leave to cool or use the sauce for pasta or other dishes immediately. Allow to cool to room temperature before placing in the fridge or freezing.
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