Quick Summary: A freezer tomato sauce made from fresh heirloom tomatoes, simmered with basil, thyme, garlic, and sumac, my secret ingredient for depth. Separate your tomatoes by color and you get three different sauces: robust (more acidic) red, sweet orange, and tangy green. Run it through a hand or electric food mill and freeze it in ziplock bags for winter. Prep: 20 min | Cook: 1 hr | Makes: about 8 cups
Jump to: RECIPE | Sumac as secret ingredient | 3 Sauces: Red, Orange and Green | How to Make It | Using Hand Held Food Mill | Using Electric Food Mill | FAQ
Tomato season at Heathglen Farm is short but intense. By late August, I’m swimming in heirloom tomatoes and racing to preserve as many as possible before the first frost.
This freezer sauce is my workhorse recipe. It is fresh tomatoes simmered with onion, garlic, basil, and thyme, then frozen in batches for winter. The secret ingredient is sumac, a Middle Eastern spice that adds a subtle tangy depth without overpowering the tomato flavor.
People always ask what’s different about this sauce. Well, now the secret ingredient is not so secret anymore!
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Sumac: The Secret Ingredient in My Tomato Sauce
Sumac is a deep red spice ground from dried sumac berries, common in Middle Eastern cooking. It has a tangy, slightly fruity flavor, almost like lemon but earthier.
In tomato sauce, it adds a subtle brightness that makes people notice something is different without being able to identify it. Start with 2 teaspoons per batch and adjust to taste.
Sumac is a spice that is relatively new to the American palate. It was noted by several chefs that I follow that it was a good complement to tomatoes, so I thought I’d give it a try. They were right.
If you can’t find it at the grocery store, try a Middle Eastern market. A reader, Art, finds it at Indian grocery stores.
How to Make a Basic Freezer Tomato Sauce
The ingredient and recipe details are listed in the recipe card below. In short:
- Sauté chopped onion in olive oil until caramelized, add garlic, then add coarsely chopped fresh tomatoes with basil, thyme, chile pepper, salt, and sumac.
- Simmer for about an hour until thickened. Run through a food mill to remove skins and seeds (or leave rustic), cool, and freeze in labeled bags.
Add this freezer basil pesto to your meal with the tomato sauce and you’re golden.
Tips for the Best Flavor
- Use the ripest tomatoes you can find, even if they’re a little soft. Heirloom varieties with thin skins work especially well.
- Don’t skip the caramelized onions; they add sweetness and depth.
- If you prefer a smoother sauce, use a food mill. If you like texture, just pull out the larger skin pieces with tongs as it cools.
- For help choosing the best varieties for sauce, this guide to heirloom tomato flavor profiles by color breaks down which tomatoes are meaty enough for cooking
3 Heirloom Tomato Sauces: Red, Orange, and Green
I like to separate the heirloom tomatoes by color as I find they make very different flavored sauces. The bright red tomatoes made a more acidic sauce, the orange tomatoes made the sweetest sauce and the green and yellow tomatoes made the tangiest sauce.
The green sauce comes from green-when-ripe heirlooms like Green Zebra, not unripe green tomatoes.
While not exact, many taste tests at Heathglen Farm have resulted in this guide on the flavor-to-color relationship of the various heirloom varieties.
I use these sauces all year in a variety of ways. Some of my favorite pairings include:
- Red sauce: the most acidic and classic. My pick for marinara, lasagna, and meatballs.
- Orange sauce: the sweetest and mildest. Lovely with seafood, a light summer pasta, or as a pizza base.
- Green and yellow sauce: the tangiest. Great with chicken, clam linguini, or eggs.
If you grow your own tomatoes, my guide to growing tomatoes for the best flavor covers how I get the most taste out of every plant.
Using a Hand Held Food Mill
An old-fashioned hand-held food mill does a great job of removing the skins and seeds from tomato sauce. It gets tiring if you have a lot of tomatoes, but it works like a charm and is inexpensive. You can find them on Amazon or at a local Walmart.
How to use a hand-held food mill for tomato sauce:
- Set the mill over a large bowl, with its legs resting on the rim, and fit it with the fine or medium disk.
- Ladle in 1 to 2 cups of the cooked, slightly cooled sauce.
- Turn the crank forward to push the pulp through. Every few turns, crank backward once to clear the skins off the disk.
- Scrape the sauce off the bottom of the disk into the bowl, then discard the skins and seeds and repeat.
Using an Electric Food Mill
This year I tried an electric food mill. I knew I’d be growing heirloom tomatoes for many more years, so I wanted something sturdy, and I picked a commercial model with a large hopper, all stainless steel, and the biggest motor I could find.
I was in a hurry, which is always the wrong time to buy an expensive tool, and I didn’t do as much research as I should have. It’s definitely a beast. It turned out excellent sauce in minutes, but it was hard to assemble and hard to clean. If I did it over, I’d buy a less expensive one.
Most electric food mills look about the same, so read the reviews carefully before you buy. This model looks very much like mine, with a smaller motor and a smaller price tag. Here’s my beast, and the three sauces it made.
All three sauces came out smooth, and the flavor was outstanding. The mill took out the skins and seeds, which change a sauce’s texture (and many cooks find the seeds add bitterness), and left me with some delicious freezer sauces.
The texture of the sauces were smooth and the flavor was outstanding. Skins and seeds change the texture of a sauce, and many cooks find the seeds add bitterness. This food mill took both of those out and left me with some delicious freezer sauces.
Check out this collection of popular tomato recipes for a range of tomato recipes, from fresh salsas to slow cooked stews, to tomato martinis.
FAQ
Properly stored in freezer bags or containers, it keeps for 6 to 8 months. Label with the date so you use older batches first.
No. Simmering softens the skins, and a food mill removes them at the end. If you don’t have a food mill, you can pull out large skin pieces with tongs or blanch and peel tomatoes before cooking.
Yes, and it’s low carb too, at about 13 grams of net carbs per cup with no added sugar, unlike many jarred sauces. Fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic, and herbs are all slow carb. My slow carb food list has the rest.
Not as written. The onion, garlic, and olive oil change the acidity and density, and the USDA’s tested recipes for tomato sauce with vegetables require a pressure canner. Plain tomato sauce with no added vegetables can be water-bath canned if you add bottled lemon juice. If you want to can, follow a tested recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. For this sauce, freezing is the safe and simple choice.
A squeeze of lemon juice or a pinch of lemon zest gives a similar tangy note, though the flavor won’t be identical. Za’atar spice blend (which contains sumac) also works.
Yes, but leave at least an inch of headspace because the sauce expands as it freezes. Wide-mouth jars work better than narrow-mouth for freezing. Freezer bags laid flat are my preferred method because they thaw faster and stack more efficiently.
The ripest tomatoes you have, even if they’re a little soft for slicing. Heirloom paste tomatoes like San Marzano or Opalka are ideal because they’re meaty with fewer seeds. But any ripe tomato works. For more on choosing varieties by flavor and meatiness, see this guide to heirloom tomato flavor profiles.
A hand-held food mill is inexpensive and works well for a batch or two, though your arm will feel it. An electric mill turns a bushel into sauce in minutes, but it costs more and is harder to assemble and clean. If you only make sauce once a year, start with the hand mill.
Yes. They make the most flavorful sauce I know, especially when you sort them by color. Juicy heirlooms take longer to cook down than paste tomatoes, so give them the full hour.
More Ways to Preserve Summer Tomatoes
For nine more methods of preserving fresh produce, from fermenting to shrub syrups, see this complete guide to preserving fruits, vegetables, and herbs.
Freezer Tomato Sauce with Sumac
Equipment
- Dutch oven (Or large pot)
Ingredients
- 7 lbs fresh tomatoes
- 1 large onion
- 2-4 cloves garlic
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 1 cup fresh basil leaves
- 3 sprigs fresh thyme
- 1 tsp 1 tsp crushed red pepper or hot chile powder.
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp sumac
Instructions
- Coarsely chop tomatoes, onion and garlic7 lbs fresh tomatoes, 1 large onion, 2-4 cloves garlic
- Add olive oil to dutch oven or large pot and heat up over medium heat. Add onions and saute about 5 minutes or until soft and golden. Add garlic for last 30 seconds2 Tbsp olive oil
- Add tomatoes, herbs and spices and bring to a simmer over medium high heat. Lower heat and simmer for about 1 hour1 cup fresh basil leaves, 3 sprigs fresh thyme, 1 tsp 1 tsp crushed red pepper or hot chile powder., 1 tsp salt, 2 tsp sumac
- Optional: Cool slightly and add a cup of the sauce to the food mill situated over a bowl. Turn the food mill to grind the tomato peels, seeds and pulp, releasing the sauce to the bowl below the food mill.If you want to leave the sauce more rustic, you don’t have to run it through the food mill. The tomato peels are the main problem, as they can put people off the texture. You could just pull the peels out with tongs as it is cooling. Alternatively you can peel the tomatoes ahead of time, but you will lose some of the intensity of flavor.
- Cool the sauce, then refrigerate it within 2 hours until cold. Pour into freezer bags, squeeze out the air, label with the date, and freeze flat in ziplock bags.
Notes
- For three flavors, make one batch per color (see text for more details on varieties and flavor differences
Is the nutritional values for a serving or the whole recipe?
It is for one serving. The whole batch is considered 8 servings.
@dorothy stainbrook,
Thank you
Sumac?
Yes! Sumac goes really well with tomatoes and brings out the flavor. It used to be hard to find in powdered form, but it’s getting more popular now and you can often find it in the local grocer.
@dorothy stainbrook,
Sandy….i find Sumac at Asian Indian stores in my area.