All-Purpose Tomato Sauce

At the beginning of the summer, everybody raves about the tomatoes and how beautiful the tomatoes are and how they’re justing eating pounds of them with nothing but olive oil and salt.

And then a month later, you get another dozen tomatoes in the CSA and you start pining for eggplant.

Above are about half the tomatoes I needed to use up this week, not counting the pint of cherry tomatoes from the CSA the week before. I don’t even really like tomatoes too much to begin with, so at this point in the season I’m just sick of  ’em.

And that’s when I turn to my All-Purpose Tomato Sauce. This recipe uses up all the ‘maters you can throw at it, is freezable for months, and can make all kinds of stuff.

The recipe is as simple as can be: Chop an onion or so (you want about 10 times as much tomato as onion) and cook over medium heat with a generous splash of olive oil. Meanwhile, cut the stems off the tomatoes (you can use any kind—cherry, plum, heirloom, whatever) and hack them into big chunks. (No need for precision here.) When the onion’s good and browned, throw in the tomatoes and a few whole garlic cloves. Bring it to a simmer, turn the heat to low, and let cook, stirring very occasionally, until the tomatoes have almost completely fallen apart—1 to 2 hours. Puree in the pot with a stick blender (or pour into your regular blender and give it a whiz) until relatively smooth. Pour into zip-top bags or plastic containers, and freeze. That’s it.

You’ll notice there’s no seasoning in this recipe. That’s to make the tomato sauce as versatile as possible—you can add salt, pepper, herbs, or whatever later. Here’s just a sample of what you can do with All-Purpose Tomato Sauce:

• Add salt, pepper, oregano, basil, red pepper, and a bay leaf, and simmer until it’s as thick as you like for marinara sauce.

• Chop some bacon or pancetta pretty fine, cook until crisp, and add All-Purpose Tomato Sauce, salt, grated pecorino or Parmesan, and a lot of red pepper for sugo all’amatriciana. (It’s best with a long pasta like spaghetti.)

• Add salt, pepper, oregano, thyme, and a tiny bit of sugar, then cook down until nice and thick for pizza sauce.

• Add chicken stock and cook for a bit, then add a splash of cream for tomato soup.

• Use as-is in Sloppy Faux for Meatless Monday (or sub cooked ground beef for TVP for Sloppy Joes).

Anybody have any other suggestions? Or want to have some? I’ve got a few containers in the freezer right now, and more tomatoes on the way in this week’s CSA.