A friend asked me how to make spaghetti sauce, so instead of having her over for several hours of boredom over a boiling pot, I put together this photo tutorial.
I'm no expert, by any means. I used my mother-in-law's recipe, which is different from the Ball canning books, but the cooking and canning directions are still the same. The books say not to alter recipes because acidity can be off and produce something unsafe to eat, but several people have enjoyed Gramma's sauce for a while now and no one's died yet.
What you need:
Ingredients:
About a half bushel of tomatoes. The meatier, the better.
About three pounds of onions. I think this is three pounds, not sure, but it's all I had on hand so it was good enough for me.
A hot pepper or two. I didn't have any left for this batch, so there are none.
I like sweeter sauce, so I used a cup of sugar. Add or subtract as you like, between 3/4 cup and 1 1/2 cups.
Between 1/4 cup and 1/2 cup of salt, to taste.
1 TBSP oregano.
1 tsp basil.
Bottled lemon juice (enough for 2 TBSP per jar).
Tomato paste, probably two of the big cans just to be safe.
I added three minced cloves of garlic.
Equipment:
A really big steel pot. I used my pressure canner to cook in, without the lid. A regular spaghetti pot isn't big enough.
Canner and canning supplies - jar gripper thing, magnetic lid picker-upper, headspace tool, and funnel.
Food strainer. And a solid surface to attach it to, like the side of a table or a countertop, if you have a thin enough counter lip.
Potato masher. I think metal would be a bit easier to use, if available, but this is what David brought me and it works. Just needs some extra elbow grease.
Jars, lids, and bands. I happened to have a set of wide mouth jars from my mother-in-law, but for sauce it doesn't matter. These are nice for whole tomatoes, whole fruits, or large chunks of fruits and veggies.
Cooking:
Wash, chop, and core tomatoes. The quickest way I do it is to cut large pieces off in a square around the core, then cut the core piece off to get that little bit of tomato meat. Then pitch the little square with the stem part. You don't need to chop tomatoes into little bits. For smaller tomatoes, chunks like this are fine. For big tomatoes, like beefsteaks, just cut the bigger chunks in half.
Working in small amounts (several small tomatoes or about six big ones) toss the pieces into the pot and turn on the heat to medium high.
Take your potato masher and crush the tomatoes a bit to let the juices out. This gets easier the hotter the tomatoes get.
Let them heat up a bit.
Keep adding layers of tomatoes in small amounts and crush them as you go. As the mixture heats up more, keep squishing them.
Add the onions, pepper (if you use it), sugar, salt, and herbs to the mix.
Stir it all together, bring to a boil, and now the waiting begins.
I like to use a wooden spoon so I can see what the depth of the sauce is and how far it reduces as time goes on. Keep the pot at about medium-high heat, and come back every so often to stir it to prevent scorching on the bottom. It takes about three hours or so to reduce by half.
By the one hour mark, things have already progressed.
By the two hour mark, it's thickened up a bit but still needs more time.
You can see at two hours how much it has reduced by the stains on the spoon.
At the three hour mark, it's reduced a little more and is a bit thicker. It's ok to strain it now, but I'm letting it continue to boil for a little bit so Kelsey can help crank the strainer after her nap. (And so I can have an extra pair of hands when David comes home from work.)
In the meantime...
Prepare your shit:
Wash jars, lids, and bands. I prepared seven jars because the last two half-bushel recipes I did yielded about 6-7 quarts of sauce. Also, the canner only holds seven quarts at a time.
Follow manual directions to assemble the food strainer.
Put the jars in the canner and fill them with water so they don't float everywhere when you fill the rest of the canner.
Fill canner til the jars are just covered. You're gonna need to remove some of this water later when you put the filled jars in there, so keep a coffee mug close by for that.
Put the lid on the canner and turn on high heat to heat the jars. You don't have to boil them to death. Once the water is steaming hot, if the sauce is ready by then, you can fill them. If it starts to boil and the sauce isn't ready, turn the heat down and let them sit in hot water.
Heat the lids in water on a low heat.
Strain that shit:
Because my countertop doesn't have enough lip to hold the food strainer, I have to do this part at the dining room table. I don't have many large containers, so I use a pot to bring a good amount of the sauce over to the table to strain into the little containers (nothing large fits under that guard) and once the container is filled, I pour it into the big spaghetti pot.
Here's the setup.
Pour the sauce into the funnel. I start off slow since the watery part of the sauce will spray out. When most of the water is squeezed out, I can turn the crank a little faster. The sauce comes out the front and the waste (seeds, skins, and large pieces of food) comes out the side.
I don't know if it helps, but I periodically scrape off what I can reach on the strainer to open the holes back up. It seems to help keep things moving.
Keep going until nothing falls from the strainer and there's nothing left in the waste tube.
Now all of the sauce from the big pot has been processed through the strainer. Luckily, this batch fit into one pot. I had to use a second big bowl last time.
There are usually stuck-on chunks left in the pot after everything was taken out. So to keep the sauce smooth, I wash the pot out before putting the sauce back in. Reheat the sauce back to boiling. At this time, if I have the chance, I rinse (or even better, wash) all the strainer parts, because tomato shit is ridiculously hard to clean up later after it's dried and cemented itself to everything you used.
Once the sauce is boiling again, you can either keep it boiling to reduce it to a thickness you like or you can take the quick route -
Several scoops of tomato paste from this bigass can my mother-in-law gave me. Add til everything is as thick as you like. I have to smear it along the side of the pot a little bit to help it dissolve better.
It takes some effort but it helps add thickness (and keep some volume so you have more sauce).
Once the sauce is as thick as you like and boiling, the jars are heated, and the lids are all warmed up, put a clean dish towel on your workspace (preferably close to the stove top) and get ready to can. This part is constant.
Canning:
Using the gripper things, pull out and empty each jar. Set them on the towel on your workspace. Add 2 TBSP lemon juice to each quart jar (or do one at a time so you don't end up dirtying a jar you don't need). If using pints, add 1 TBSP lemon juice per jar.
Working all the way through one jar at a time, put the funnel on top of a jar and fill it with sauce.
Spaghetti sauce calls for a half inch headspace, so use the headspace tool to show you how high to fill your jars.
Use the same tool to carefully stir out any trapped air bubbles.
Using a clean dish cloth, wipe the rim clean of food and water.
Using the magnet tool, pick up a heated jar lid and place it on top of your jar.
Screw on the band til you meet resistance, then use your fingertips to tighten it. Do not tighten them too hard or too loose.
Using the gripper, put the jar in the pot. Repeat all of the above canning steps for each jar until the sauce is gone. I've had partial jars left over, I just put them in the fridge and use for dinner later. This particular batch only made five quart jars, so I had two prepared jars left over. You can reuse the heated lids as long as the rubber sealant on the underside isn't damaged.
Once all of your jars are filled and in the canner, place the lid and turn up the heat to a boil. Remove excess water so it doesn't overflow. With pints, I haven't had this issue, but with quarts, too much water is displaced so I need to remove some. There needs to be about an inch or so of water over the lids so they can boil properly. When the water starts boiling, set a timer to process the jars for 30 minutes.
It's important to add hot sauce into hot jars, so you don't have to worry about heating everything up too much. 30 minutes is fine when everything was prepared hot. The Ball canning book recommends 30 minutes for pints, as well.
When 30 minutes is up, turn off the heat and take the lid off the canner. Let it sit for five minutes or so, then use the gripper and take the jars out of the water. Sit them on a dish towel on the counter to cool overnight.
In the morning, test the seal by poking the middle of the lid with your finger. If it pops, your seal is broken. If nothing happens, congrats! You canned some sauce! Label the lid with a Sharpie, including canning date, and store away for later use.
Any questions, feel free to ask here or on Facebook. Thanks for sticking around for a hell of a long post!
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