If you need ANY more inspiration to plant untold tomato seedlings next season, this is one of them: my yet-to-be famous Smokey Tomato Sauce is simply divine!
It’s yet to be famous because this recipe hasn’t been published until now, but I will claim this one! I have tried them all. Virtually every tomato sauce to grace the supermarket shelves, I have tried. But after a HUGE harvest (yes, I planted 60 tomato plants last season), I turned to make my own.
Firstly, if you look at the list of ingredients (which in New Zealand must be listed from the ‘most of’ first) you’ll find the majority of tomato sauces in the market has SUGAR as the first ingredient….or if not, APPLE.
This homemade tomato sauce recipe has TOMATOES and plenty of them.
A little bit of spice, a little bit of smokey flavour….there is no turning back, this is set to be on my annual bottling list forever.
For those of you that don’t have enough space to grow a plentiful crop, be sure to look in the supermarkets or grocery markets in the glut of the season as they can be extremely cheap per kilogram.
The secret, I reckon, is the addition of liquid smoke extract. I found the Adventure Kitchen brand online as I didn’t have any luck in my local store. You don’t need much as it packs quite a smokey punch.
Once bottled, if you can bear the wait, leave for about a month to allow all those flavours to infuse.
Smokey Tomato Sauce
Makes approx: 2-3 litres
Ingredients:
- 3kg tomatoes
- 6 garlic cloves
- 3 medium onions
- 4 green or red chilli
- 1/2 tsp ground cloves
- 1/2 tsp ground allspice
- ½ tsp ground ginger
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
- 2 Tbsp salt
- 2 cups malt vinegar
- ½ tsp liquid smoke extract
- 1 x 330ml bottle beer
Method:
- Wash tomatoes, skin-on, and roughly chop into pieces. Weigh and add them to a large cooking pot.
- Peel and chop garlic and onion finely, as with the whole chilli, then add to pot.
- Add ground cloves, allspice, ginger, paprika then heat over medium heat in its own juice, until all the veggies are well cooked and soft (approx. 30 minutes). Stir well to ensure all the veggies get even cooking.
- Remove from heat, allow to cool slightly then blend in a kitchen blitz/whizz until smooth. Alternatively you can use a stick blender.
- Return the contents back to the saucepan then add brown sugar, malt vinegar, salt and smoke extract.
- Bring to the boil and keep it bubbling for approx 1-2 hours until it thickens. Stir occasionally as it thickens from the bottom of the pot so you don’t want it burning. Cook for longer if necessary until you get the thickness you desire (it’s personal choice after all)!
- Meanwhile, clean and prepare your bottles and lids for sterilisation (I put clean bottles in a 100°C oven to heat, and boil the lids in a saucepan).
- Pour in your choice of beer, and simmer for a further few minutes. You may wish to simmer longer if the texture is too runny.
- Bottle sauce while hot (careful for hot splatters) into hot bottles. Wipe the open mouth of the bottle for any dribbles, then seal with hot lids.
