Canning tomato sauce

Any tricks to getting that to thicken up? Have tried all the usual tricks and it always ends up watery.

Great Value tomato juice would make a better sauce than what I end up with.

How long are you cooking it? Also are you taking out the seeds?

Best results to date.......wash maters and heat them in a pot.......with seeds and skins........for about 30 minutes.....to start a boil. Then run thru a mill to get seeds and skins out. Then return to pot and simmer for a couple hours to boil off some water, then can hot.

Have also tried running them thru a mill fresh.........then simmer to boil water off.

Have tried blocking them up and letting them drip water in a colander before cooking milling and cooking.........

All of them end up about the same. Thin and watery.

Most instructions also say after milling, you need to heat to a simmer / lite boil......to reduce volume by half. If you cook that long, the pulp breaks down and it just stays watery. Cook too long or too hot and sugar starts to caramelize and it tastes burnt.

We wash, slice up and cook for 1/2 hr. then mill and simmer until the wooden spoon stands up on its own. Always thick.

Add store bought cans of tomato paste.

Cook it down in an electric turkey roaster. I pour it in in the afternoon and let it cook on the lowest setting overnight. In the morning it's usually about perfect.

One other concept I'm thinking of is to use a stainless steel steam table tray, run in a couple inches of sauce and put in convection oven at low temp, with fan running. Idea is to increase surface area to speed up the rate of evaporation. Similar to the turkey roaster idea, but in an oven. Can stack multiple pans in the oven.

Once upon a time, I found a reference to the need to cook the tomatoes pretty fast, with skins on. Goal was to keep / enhance the pectin, which was the thickening agent. If that is the case, I may not be cooking them hot enough or fast enough release the pectin before milling.

I'd be curious to know how the commercial canner operations do it.

We do the electric roaster over night also.

With the cost of lids and gas/electric, there is no way I can compete with prices like this for tomato sauce

One thing you have to remember is that you'll never achieve the type of sauce you can get at the store out of a can. Why? Because you are not adding anything fake in it. No colors, no thickeners, no artificial flavors. All of that being said, there are methods to a thick sauce. The biggest mistake most make is too much heat. You don't want to overheat sauce. You'll get separation. If you have ever noticed canned sauce on a shelf with water on the top and sauce an inch or more down, that sauce was overheated when it was cooked. I know of some Italians that cut their tomatoes, put them in a pillow case and hang them overnight to drip getting rid of excess water. That trick works quite well. Finally, use the correct tomatoes. Romas are some of the best for sauce. If you are using "Big Boys" or sammich tomatoes, your sauce isn't going to be very good and probably have a horrible aftertaste. Ask me how I know.

Wife uses a ricer to separate seeds from juice and pulp.

We also dehydrate some and freeze some.

Awesome post Finster.
I will add that Amish Paste and San Marzano make for great sauce maters as well. I love them for sauce and use the big canner maters for juice. When I clean and core I place the maters in a colander, same concept as the pillow case, it does help get rid of some of the water.

Some good tips for me on the slow cookers and time. I was going to just say heat and patience as I have no real good tips.

Bryce

I wouldn't mind trying to dehydrate some. I have a very nice dehydrator. Tell me, I assume you use a pan or whatever, how deep is the sauce in the pan and at what temperature do you dehydrate it at?

They also make instant food thickener you can buy just add a little at a time to get the thickness you want. I've never used it and then canned so I'm not sure how that will work just an option.