Spaghetti Sauce Time

The tomatoes just keep on coming. I can't believe they are finally getting ripe. It's almost Halloween. Oh well. We'll take 'em when we get 'em. I've been working on a spaghetti sauce recipe. This last batch turned out wonderful. This recipe may be "the one".


I got these 4 jars, plus a Pyrex bowl full (that I'll eat tomorrow night). Why aren't the jars full? I am going to store these in the freezer and the contents need lots of room to expand. You don't want glass jars rupturing in the freezer. That would be a nasty mess to clean up. I would much prefer to water bath can the sauce, but I have the wrong type of stove (glass top). Freezing will have to do. I started the sauce process Tuesday night, after work. I got Gladys all set up with her strainer attachment and began blanching and peeling the tomatoes.


I have to say I was disappointed in the KitchenAid strainer. If I wanted "tomato juice" it would be fine. But it was taking out most of the tomato along with the seeds. I quickly abandoned that idea and went back to chopping the tomatoes in the food processor (R2D2). I don't mind seeds in my sauce. This spaghetti sauce is easy to make using your slow cooker. It needs to be the large size.

Roxi's Slow Cooker Spaghetti Sauce
10 cups chopped fresh tomatoes, skins removed
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 Tbs. olive oil
2 cans tomato paste
2 Tbs. dried basil
2 Tbs. dried parsley
1 Tbs. dried oregano
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 Tbs. salt (or to taste)
1 tsp. pepper

Place tomatoes in a large crock pot. Saute onions, pepper, and garlic in olive oil. Add to pot. Add remaining ingredients. Stir well. Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours to allow flavors to meld. Crack the lid, by setting it slightly to the side, to allow moisture to escape and cook on LOW another 4 hours. Freeze or can.

I was able to use my home grown basil and parsley in the sauce. I am getting quite a bit of use out of my dehydrator. Here is the parsley. This is from 2 plants. I started with 4 racks full. Then I condensed it down to one rack. Here it is when completely dry.


I then removed the leaves from the stems and crushed up the leaves before storing them in these handy jars which I'd re purposed. They used to hold Japanese "sprinkles". The kind you put on rice.