Every New Zealand household must stock tomato sauce at all times or risk village ridicule by vegetable flinging and it is without a doubt, our national condiment.
In New Zealand, ketchup is tomato sauce. Marinara is what we call pasta sauce. So when a kiwi wants tomato sauce, it’s always the condiment, not the stuff you eat with meatballs and pasta.
It calms him
The Koala loves tomato sauce more than anyone I know. He can’t eat a pie or steak without it and pasta dishes (even marinara) need tomato sauce applied liberally on top before he can enjoy it. I recently read that tomato sauce calms people. The Koala eats a lot of tomato sauce and he’s pretty calm so I guess it explains a few things. Perhaps I should keep a little bottle of sauce in my bag as “rescue remedy”.
I’ve always wanted to try making tomato sauce because I never knew what went into it and we go through a lot of sauce on a regular basis.
The recipe
This recipe is based off the Edmond’s cookbook recipe. Who knew I had the recipe under my nose this whole time? Not me. Making sauce is surprisingly easy. The hardest thing would be straining the sauce and perhaps getting it into the bottle. I didn’t have a funnel, but I’m sure if you had a funnel or a wider mouthed bottle, it would be a lot easier and much less messy!
This sauce will fill your house with the most glorious smell and The Koala declared the flavour of this sauce superior to his beloved store-bought sauce. That is a very bold claim! I would be nervous to throw that kind of claim around myself.
This sauce won’t last more than a couple of weeks in this house but make sure you sterilise your bottle/s. Everything I’ve read suggests to so I’m sure that is a good warning to take note of. After thoroughly washing an already clean bottle, I used iodophor which is used to sterilise cheese making equipment but you could also use the boiling and/or oven methods too.
Tomato Sauce
Makes 1 litre
Ingredients
1.2kg (2.6lb) fresh tomatoes – about 8 tomatoes
2 apples
2 onions
1 cup white sugar
1 ⅓ cups malt vinegar
5 cloves
10 black peppercorns
Preparation
- Cut up tomatoes into quarters, peel apples, remove core and cut into bite size pieces. Peel and chop onion.
- Put all ingredients into a large pot. Bring to the boil, turn down to medium heat, cover with lid and cook for 1 hour. Remove lid and cook for a further hour stirring regularly to ensure sauce does not burn. The longer you cook the sauce, the thicker and more intense the flavour.
- Take off heat and run a stick blender through the sauce until smooth. Pass sauce through a sieve and pour into a sterilised bottle.
Bunny Eats Design 
Trying this for sure!
Jeffrey Steingarten has a recipe for tomato sauce that I’ve been meaning to try, unfortunately tomatoes are not in season here so I’ll have to wait for summer.
Nice compliment from the Koala.
We don’t eat fresh tomatoes out of summer. They can cost $20 per kilo and they don’t taste good. I hope to try a few more tomato sauce recipes before the summer is up.
You should oven dry the tomatoes and freeze them for the winter. $20/kilo sounds ridiculous!
That’s a great idea Eva. In the height of summer, they can get down to $3 a kg so it’s a huge difference.
I did a post a few years ago http://kitcheninspirations.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/the-humble-tomato/
I don’t think I could get through that amount of tomato sauce in a few weeks, though if it’s really that good…. This reminds me of the time I tried making chilli for the first time, using an American recipe. I should have clicked that adding 2 cups of what I call tomato sauce was not a good idea, but I had turned my thinking brain off.
Ah yes, tomato sauce as an ingredient. I didn’t think of that. What did you do to save the chili? Can you believe that it’s Saturday morning and we have only half a bottle of sauce left. We have eaten 500ml of sauce in 3 days, though we didn’t even eat any on Friday. At least we shared the sauce on the first day.
I tried to tip the liquid away and replace it with tomato puree, but it was beyond saving, really. Funny, I’ve had an Edmonds cookbook for years, and I only seem to use it for scones, biscuits and things like French Toast. Never even looked at their other recipes!
As is the way in Aus as well. Tomato sauce is the go to of all condiments and is liberally poured over everything. Eww. I might try this though, not sure if it would replace the bought version, but I’m gonna like it. 🙂
Hi Jennifer, at least you know what’s in it if you make it yourself. Liberally pour away!
Oh yum!! With tomatoes being so cheap at the moment (and being out of sauce; yes I am that person at the moment haha) I’m going to give this a go!
Let me know how you get on and if you make any tinkers to the recipe.
I never thought of making my own ketchup 😀 this sounds awesome. it’s always a must-have in our house. :)) I shall try!
Hi Marnelli! Please do and let me know how you get on.
Honestly I never tried making my own awesomesauce 🙂 But I see there are apples in there, in the Philippines we have what you call banana ketchup I guess if I replace the apples with bananas it will become one. I just got to try that!
Bananas in sauce? That sounds pretty wild. Bananas are very perfumey to me and I wonder how that goes with tomatoes?
Bookmarking for summer! My mum used to make amazing homemade tomato sauce – wonder if it’s the same recipe. When we were back both my parents and H1’s parents only had Greggs in – treason!
Treason! I don’t know if I’ve had Greggs, funny that both sets of parents had Greggs.
We were unimpressed. In fact, we went out and bought Watties when we were at my folks’ place!
That is awesome!!!! I love that you guys made it from scratch. It sounds like the relationship that the Koala has with tomato sauce (many thanks for the cultural tip) that I have with hot sauce. Must. Always. Have. Hot. Sauce 🙂
Funny, I know a New Yorker that lived with us for a little while who was addicted to hot sauce. She kept a bottle in her bag and even put it on her blueberry pancakes once! Can you relate?
Hello, I never think of making a sauce from scratch, this is a great idea. By the wat I really love the green bunny in the photo…so cute ( a sucker for everything looks like bunny) 🙂
Me too! The green bunny was a gift from another bunny-loving food blogger: Cass from foodmyfriend.com.