Last Friday we made a batch of home canned spaghetti sauce using my favorite recipe, adapted from The Encyclopedia of Country Living
Spaghetti Sauce Recipe (Without Meat) for Canning
Ingredients
30 pounds tomatoes
1/4 cup butter
1 cup chopped onions
5 minced garlic cloves
1 cup chopped celery or green pepper (I used celery)
1 pound sliced mushrooms (optional, I skipped these)
2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons oregano (flakes, not powder)
1/4 cup minced parsley
1/4 cup brown sugar or unrefined cane sugar (rapadura
NOTE: It is not safe to increase the proportion of onions, peppers, celery or mushrooms in this recipe if you are planning to can the sauce. (This will change the acidity of the product and increase the potential for spoilage. See The Natural Canning Resource Book for a full explanation or safe canning practices.)
Start with 30 pounds of tomatoes. (Here’s what I had to work with this time around – some red, some purple, some yellow – they all cook down, and mine weren’t too juicy this year because of the lack of rain. This is around 50 pounds of tomatoes that I used to make a batch of sauce and a batch of salsa.)
Wash 30 pounds of tomatoes. Remove cores and quarter tomatoes. Boil 20 minutes, uncovered, in large pan. I cook mine at a strong simmer in an assortment of heavy bottom stainless steel pans. Thick bottom pans prevent accidental scorching, frequent stirring is recommended. Don’t use aluminum, folks, it will react with the acid in the tomatoes and you’ll get your daily dose of Alzheimer’s in the making. We started out with four pots.
Put through large food mill or sieve. I have a Back to Basics food strainer
The recipe says to add your other ingredients at this point, but I prefer to cook down the tomatoes first. I think this gives a better flavor to the final product. We went from four pots to two after the food strainer.
Still more cooking reduced the volume down to one pot. The goal is to reduce the volume by about half to yield a nice, thick sauce. While the sauce is cooking, you can do the rest of the prep work, like chopping the rest of your veggies, filling the canner, and getting the lids and jars ready.
My pressure canner
Saute in 1/4 cup butter until tender:
1 cup chopped onions
5 minced garlic cloves
1 cup chopped celery or green pepper (I used celery)
1 pound sliced mushrooms (optional, I skipped these)
Combine sauteed vegetables and tomatoes.
Add:
2 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons oregano (flakes, not powder)
1/4 cup minced parsley
1/4 cup brown sugar or unrefined cane sugar
Bring to a boil. Stir frequently to avoid burning. Reduce heat to simmer, keep hot while waiting to process.
Fill jars, leaving 1 inch headspace. Adjust lids. Process in a pressure canner 20 minutes for pints, 25 minutes for quarts. If using a weighted-gauge canner, set at 10 pounds pressure at 0-1,000 feet above sea level; set at 15 pounds pressure at higher altitudes. If using a dial-gauge canner; set at 11 pounds pressure at 0-2000 feet above sea level; 12 pounds at 2,001-4,000 feet; 13 pounds at 4,001-6,000 feet; 14 pounds at 6.001-8,000 feet; or 15 pounds above 8,000 feet.
My husband came in from outside while this was cooking, smiled and said the house smelled like an Italian restaurant – a good Italian restaurant. I had to agree – it was a particularly fragrant batch. I suspect that the lack of rainfall this season concentrated the flavors of the aromatics in the sauce. Yields around eight pints.
This round of canning yielded eight pints of spaghetti sauce, 14 pints of salsa, three pints of stewed tomatoes and 5 pints of tomato juice. (I drained some juice off the tomatoes before making them into salsa and sauce by putting them in a strainer after they were cut into pieces.)
It took about a day and half, but combined with what I already have in the pantry this should keep us in tomato products until next harvest season.
14 Responses to “Home Canned Spaghetti Sauce – So Delicious!”
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Good tutorials on both the spaget sauce and salsa! I've been making and freezing "raw" tomatoe soup and sauce – sure glad those 'maters made it before the frost nailed the garden!
I bet your house smells heavenly! You really are my idol in all the canning goodness!
lisa
Most days it smells pretty good, I must admit. That's one of my favorite parts of cooking and one of my favorite things to come home to after a day in town. :^)
Laurie, I am loving your posts! Just the inspiration I am needing! Those tomatoes look fabulous and I can just smell the sauce. I am growing more tomatoes next year. *Ü*
Michelle, some of my favorite paste varieties are Amish Paste, Opalka and Purple Russian. For me, one or more of these three will produce large, meaty fruit and lots of them no matter what the weather conditions. My favorite seed sources are on the sidebar. It takes time to do this, but the technique is easy and the flavor is outstanding.
I'm down to my last can. It's time while there are still some tomatoes left.
What, no Basil in your pasta sauce?
I keep looking back at this recipe, and after making a couple of batches of tomato sauce (not this recipe unfortunately as we just don't have that many tomatoes in our little garden) I wonder about the food ratios; you mention that "It is not safe to increase the proportion of onions, peppers, celery or mushrooms in this recipe if you are planning to can the sauce …" but you reduce the amount of tomatoes considerably during the entire process. Is this what you expect of the volume of tomatoes to vegetables?
Glenn, believe it or not, I'm not a huge fan of basil. I use it pretty sparingly in the kitchen. You could probably sub it in for the mushrooms or any of the other non-acidic ingredients.
As for the tomato ratio and safety issues, the quote was from the original recipe. What I believe she wanted to avoid was people overloading the sauce with other ingredients and losing the acidity of the tomatoes. You're only driving off excess water, not really changing the proportions, when you cook the tomatoes down, with or without the other veggies. Either should increase the acidity of the end product. If one was to add an extremely high proportion of non-acidic ingredients, you could potentially create a low-acid environment that would be much more prone to spoilage. I don't think tweaking a bit this way or that would be a problem, but some people go overboard. If it's really a concern one could use a pH test on the final product before canning and add some lemon juice or vinegar to lower the acidity if needed.
Looks good. Just got done canning 15 pints spaghetti sauce today.
Good for you!
[...] Food Preservation section has a lot of great recipes – that’s where I got my favorite spaghetti sauce recipe for canning. There are also old fashioned techniques such as preserving with vinegar, salt and [...]
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Can the tomato sauce be processed in a hor water bath canner?
Water bath canning is not recommended for this sauce because the additional ingredients (other than tomatoes) raise the pH of the final product to a level where water bath canning is considered unsafe.