Best variety of tomato to use? Roma; also called paste tomatoes. They have fewer sides, thicker, meatier walls, and MUCH less water. And that means thicker sauce in less cooking time!
Ingredients
Tomatoes
Lemon Juice
Instructions
Remove the tomato skins. Here's a trick you may not know: put the tomatoes, a few at a time in a large pot of boiling water for no more than 1 minute (30 - 45 seconds is usually enough). Plunge them into a waiting bowl of ice water. This makes the skins slide right off of the tomatoes! If you leave the skins in, they become tough and chewy in the sauce, not very pleasant.
The skins should practically slide off the tomatoes. Then you can cut the tomatoes in quarters and remove the tough part around the stem and any bruised or soft parts. Why remove the skins? They become tough when you cook them! Some people use a juicer and then cook the resultant juice down. It takes more time, but there's nothing wrong with that approach.
After you have peeled the skins off the tomatoes, cut the tomatoes in half. Now we need to remove the seeds and excess water. wash your hands, work over a strainer and pot, then slide the seeds out of the tomato with your fingers. Toss the seedless tomato into a separate cooking pot. Juices caught under the strainer can be placed in the cooking pot also. You don't need to get fanatical about it; removing just most will do.
Combine one-sixth of the tomatoes in a big pot, crushing them with a wooden mallet or spoon as they are added to the pot. This will exude juice. There's generally no need to add liquid, most types of tomatoes have so much water. Continue heating the tomatoes, stirring to prevent burning. Once the tomatoes are boiling, gradually add remaining quartered tomatoes, stirring constantly These remaining tomatoes do not need to be crushed. They will soften with heating and stirring. As they cook, the tomatoes will fall apart into sauce with out much need of crushing or mushing!
Continue until all tomatoes are added. Then boil gently for 5 minutes.
Before you fill each jar with tomatoes, add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice per quart jar, 1 per pint jar. This helps to reduce the odds of spoilage and to retain color and flavor.
Fill them to within 1/2" of the top, seat the lid and hand-tighten the ring around them. NOTE: if you want to freeze the tomatoes instead, just let the tomatoes cool to room temperature, then fill your freezer containers (I like Ziploc freezer bags in the quart size), fill them completely, eliminate air pockets, seal them and pop them in the freezer. You're done!
Process the jars in a boiling-water bath for 35 minutes for pints and 40 minutes for quarts.
Notes
Each jar is around 30 oz. of crushed tomatoes. Most recipes go by 28 oz., the store bought canned size. FYI
