Living A Life With Less Preservatives: Do-It-Yourself Tomato Sauce!
Being a creature of habit with my food staples in my refrigerator and cabinets, I was in the mood the other night to make a dish I make relatively often for myself for lunch or dinner–quinoa pasta with spinach, ground turkey meat and tomato sauce. On my quest to eliminate as much processed food as possible from my diet, it dawned on me that for as much time as I spend trying to cook healthy and eat healthy, using canned tomato sauce was something I could definitely eliminate.
So you might ask, what is wrong with canned tomato sauce? Well…its not the worst thing on earth, but like most canned or jarred goods, there are a lot of preservatives in many brands, and of course added sodium, something MOST Americans do not need added to their diet. I can safely say, I read the can of the sauce I usually buy from Trader Joe’s, and the ingredients are as follows:
“Tomato puree, diced tomatoes, salt, soybean oil, chopped garlic and onions, tomato flakes, basil and oregano.”
Ok, so this doesn’t sound bad at all…although I think I would rather have olive oil in my tomato sauce over soybean oil. Then, how much salt is added? It says 530mg is in 1/2 cup serving. Considering ideally, most people should not consume more than 2300mg a day, and now those numbers have been lowered, I would rather attempt to make my own tomato sauce so I can control the amount of salt that is in it.
The first thing I did was go to a hardware store and buy some of those cool mason jars. Mason jars are molded glass jars used in canning to preserve food. If you are a person who thinks making your own jams, jellies or sauces is cool, you might want to invest in some of these. I have also seen some of the trendier restaurants around Los Angeles use these as glasses for water or alcoholic beverages.
The next thing you will need is your sauce ingredients. They are pictured below, but you don’t have to get these same brands. To fill one mason jar you will need 4-5 Roma tomatoes (or if there is another tomato you like the taste of, you can use that), 6-8 garlic cloves(depending on how garlicky you like your sauce to taste), olive oil of your choice, a bunch of basil and oregano (I did not have fresh oregano, but my guess is it would taste better with the fresh) and sea salt (you can sprinkle this in to your liking).
Next, you pour about 1/4 cup of the olive oil into a pan, let it warm up, then add the chopped garlic for about a minute, then add the tomatoes (make sure you chop them first as well). Let that sit for a few minutes, then add more basil and oregano that you think. There really is no set amount. I shredded up about a cup of fresh basil for mine and did about two tablespoons of oregano and I feel like I almost could have used more, but use your own judgement. It should look a little something like this while its cooking.
Next, you can do one of two things. You can let it simmer until the tomatoes turn into a pulp and everything is “sauce-like”, but that may take awhile. If you have a hand blender you can use that. I actually turned the stove off halfway through, let the mix cool for a minute and then poured it all into my food processor.
That was the easiest way to go. it can be a little messy with all the clean-up, but worth it for your own glorious sauce!
So now you have your very own made from scratch tomato sauce. You can use it when making your own pizza, drizzle it over pasta, or even chicken or fish. Another great thing about this particular tomato sauce recipe is the benefits of certain food pairings. Specifically if you use extra-virgin olive oil for this dish, the combinations of the oil and tomatoes boosts collagen, which helps keep skin looking firm and youthful, and the lycopene that is found in tomatoes is at its highest when cooked, and the good fat that olive oil is boosts the lycopene absorption. Definitely worth making!
