Monday, September 22, 2014

Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce

After shopping at the Minneapolis Farmers Market on Saturday morning, I had a variety of fresh produce and herbs that I was excited to can. One of the recipes I've been wanting to try was Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce from Canning Homemade.


Although there are a couple of pasta sauces at the store that taste good, there's nothing like making your own pasta sauce (which also can be used for pizza sauce) that are made with organic ingredients and don't have added preservatives and chemicals.

The recipe for the Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce is adapted from Better Homes and Garden Canning Magazine

Ingredients:

6 bulbs of garlic (I used 4 bulbs)
3 T. olive oil
4 medium red, yellow and/or green bell peppers, halved and seeded (I used red and green bell peppers)
12 pounds peeled tomatoes (I didn't peel the tomatoes since I was running them through the Vita-Mix mixer)
3 T. packed brown sugar
2 T. kosher salt
1 T. balsamic vinegar
1 t. ground pepper
2 cups snipped basil leaves (there was no basil available at the market, so I had to skip this, unfortunately)
1 cup assorted fresh oregano, thyme, or flat leave parsley (I used rosemary and parsley)
(I also added some dried thyme and Italian seasoning)
6 T. bottled lemon juice

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. While it is preheating, peel away the dry outer layer of the garlic bulbs. Cut top off and leave bulbs intact. Place cut side up on a small baking dish and drizzle with one tablespoon of oil.

Arrange peppers cut side down on a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush with remaining 2 tablespoons of oil. (I ended up pouring some oil onto the foil and then dragging the peppers through the foil so they were covered.)

Roast garlic and peppers for 40 -50 minutes or until the pepper skins are charred or the garlic cloves are soft. Cool garlic until cool enough to handle.

Pull up foil to enclose the peppers. (Didn't see this step as I was reading the instructions. That could explain why some of the peppers weren't as easy to peel as I anticipated.) Let peppers stand for 15 to 20 minutes or cool enough to handle. Peel off skin and discard. Set aside peppers.

Remove garlic by squeezing the bottom of the bulbs. Place garlic cloves in a food processor and add cut peeled tomatoes into chunks. Add some of the chunks to the garlic in the food processor. Cover and process till chopped. (I skipped these steps since I was going to use the Vita-Mix Mixer after all the ingredients had boiled on the stove.) Transfer garlic and tomatoes to a 7-8 quart stainless steel heavy pot. Repeat chopping the remaining tomatoes in batches in the food processor. Add all the tomatoes to the pot.

Add brown sugar, salt, vinegar, and black pepper to the tomato mixture. Bring to low boil and boil steady for 50 minutes stirring often. Add chopped roasted peppers to tomato mixture. Low boil for 10 to 20 minutes more or until mixture reduced to 11 cups and reaches desired consistency stirring occasionally. Remove from heat stir in basil and assorted herbs. (For some reason, the sauce did not get to a very thick consistency like I would find with the grocery store pasta sauces.)

My thought is that I could add all or a portion of a small can of tomato paste when I'm using one of the canned jars of Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce.

Spoon 1 tablespoon of bottled lemon juice into each of the hot sterilized pint jars. Ladle hot sauce into jars with lemon juice leaving a ½” headspace. Wipe jar rims, adjust lids. Process jars for 35 minutes in a water bath at a full boil.



Makes 6 pints. (I made 12 pints from this recipe.)

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