Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

For weeks we have been eyeing all the green tomatoes out in the garden and wondering when they were going to ripen.  Our customers at our farmers' market have been asking the same question.  It appears we are all starved for locally grown, vine-ripened tomatoes to replace the bland-tasting ones from the grocery store.  

Well, I'm happy to announce that the time has come and they are getting ripe faster than we can eat or sell them.  So, my thoughts have already turned to how I can use/preserve the abundance.   Last year, I wrote a blog entry about how I froze the excess tomatoes we had.

Freeze Your Tomatoes

Up until this year, I was in the workforce and rarely cooked anything that took much effort.  I was always tired when I got home and used jarred sauces when making spaghetti or pizza.  Today, however, when looking at all the ripe tomatoes laying on my kitchen counter, I decided I could surely make my own sauces!  How hard could it be?

Spaghetti sauce was my first candidate to try.  A friend had given me a good recipe a couple of months ago and I searched the internet for others.  As is my usual habit, I took what I liked from each.  The recipe I'm going to share here is a amalgamation of several recipes. 

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 to 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (I used Aleppo)
3 cups fresh tomatoes that have been run through the food processor
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Directions:
Heat the oil in a dutch oven or other heavy pan.  Saute the onion in the oil until opaque.  Add the garlic and cook about 30 seconds.   Add the oregano, basil, pepper flakes and tomatoes.  Turn heat to medium and cook until some of the juice has evaporated.  Turn heat to low and continue cooking until desired consistency.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add sugar, if desired, and cook a couple more minutes.

Here's a picture of my homemade spaghetti sauce.

It was so easy and turned out so tasty.  I am surprised at how much better I like it than the jarred kinds I have always used in the past!  Also, all the ingredients in this recipe were grown in our garden (except olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper, of course).

I will be using this sauce tomorrow for dinner.   However, my plan is to use a lot of our fresh tomatoes in this recipe, then freeze the sauce in pint-sized units so we can enjoy it all winter.