Italian Tomato Sauce
on Sep 12, 2022, Updated May 13, 2024
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Italian Tomato Sauce day, also known as 🍅 “sugo” day, is one of the most important days on the Italian calendar and so special to my family. Gathering and making sauce for the year is a tradition I hold so close to my heart. This 🇮🇹 Italian Tomato Sauce has been a tradition for generations. Steve and his family are from Cardinale, Calabria and have been making sauce this way for decades. His uncle (zio) Iginio is from Trento, Italy and he made sauce this exact way as well.
Traditions are extremely important to me and in Bulgaria we have been preserving and canning food for as long as I can remember, but without the fancy machines! I know every family makes sauce differently depending on the region, so let me know how you make yours in the ⌨️ comments and share your tips! This sauce is what I use in every single one of my recipes and the most requested tutorial over the years. It tastes like liquid gold!
Why You’ll Love Italian Tomato Sauce
There’s just something about preparing this Italian Tomato Sauce that makes it so much more than simply 🍅 tomatoes. It’s about traditions, family, making big batches to store all year and preserving the absolute best of late ☀️ summer tomatoes. The results speak for themselves: the freshest sauce you’ll ever taste. This is by far the most incredible sauce for soups, stews, and as a base when we make 🍝 pasta with meatballs, with ribs, cutlets, and many other recipes. This base sauce will add so much flavor to your favorite recipes all year long.
How to Prepare
🍅 Buy bushels of tomatoes.
🔪 Use a paring knife to cut off the green stem and any blemishes on the tomato.
💦 Place the tomatoes in clean, cold water and wash.
🔥 Now, hook up the propane tank to the gas burner and then light the burner. Put your big pot with water on top.
⏲️ Once the water has boiled, add the tomatoes. Let them boil for 15 minutes or until they are soft, and the skins are falling off.
💧 Now, remove them from the boiling water using a big metal strainer and place them in a basket with holes to drain.
🪣 In the meantime, set up the electric tomato squeezer machine with two buckets on each end. One bucket to catch the peels/seeds and the other to catch the tomato sauce.
🍅 Put the boiled tomatoes in the top funnel of the machine and press down with the tamper. The sauce will come out of the spout and the skins come out on the side.
✌️ Once all the tomatoes have finished, take the bucket with the peels and pass those through again.
🧂 Once the sauce is in the pails, add salt to taste or leave it plain.
Nonna’s Tip 🍅
After boiling the jars, listen carefully. You should hear a “POP”, which is how you will know the lids are properly sealed.
Filling the Jars
🌿 Now, wash and dry the basil leaves using a salad spinner and then add a small handful to each mason jar.
🥄 Take a funnel and put it on top of the jar and use a small pot to scoop the sauce into the funnel, filling each jar to the rim.
🧻 Wipe the rim clean with a paper towel and tighten the lid.
💦 Dump out the water that the tomatoes boiled in and add fresh new water.
🔥 Put a thick cloth inside the pot and fill it with water and let it boil.
🌡️ Once it’s boiling, take the closed jars and put them in the hot water with heatproof gloves or a canning jar lifter.
⏲️ Boil the jars for about 30 minutes, then take them out and place them lid-side down onto a blanket. You should hear a “pop” and that’s how you know the lid is fully sealed.
🌀 Cover the jars with a blanket (or a few) and let them rest overnight.
🫙 The following day, flip them over, store and enjoy!
Variations and Substitutions for Italian Tomato Sauce
- In addition to basil, you can also add fresh oregano to this Italian Tomato Sauce, however we only add basil to ours.
- If you want to add garlic, you are more than welcome to but we like to leave ours plain and add garlic as we cook with it on the stove.
- Using the same technique and guidelines, you can also make just a couple of jars on the stove and using a handheld food mill.
Similar Recipes
Best Served With
- Pasta and meatballs, of course!
- This Italian Tomato Sauce is great in soups or stews.
- Use this Italian Tomato Sauce on top of pizzas or in chicken parmigiana or my Eggplant Ricotta Lasagna Rolls.
- With eggs in my Creamy Feta Shakshouka.
Common Questions
When tomatoes are in season you can buy bushels of tomatoes at any Italian store, farm, or grocery store. Some examples here in Toronto are Cataldi’s, Longo’s, and Fortinos.
This will depend on the bushel and how many times you pass the tomato skin through the machine. We usually get 15 to 20 one litre jars per bushel. So, if we get three bushels, we make around 45 to 60 large one-litre jars.
Yes, we always buy new lids and rings. We re-use our mason jars. It is important to always use new lids so that they seal properly, and you prevent botulism as well. A lot of times the lids and rings will be rusty as well, so we always make sure to purchase new ones.
You can purchase the one litre wide-mouth jars and lids on my Amazon store, or any store like Canadian Tire, Walmart, and most grocery stores when tomatoes are in season. We always use the wide-mouth jars and lids as they are easiest to fill. Our equipment is decades old but please go to a kitchen appliance or restaurant supply store like Nella as you will most likely find everything you need there. You can also call your local Italian stores as well and ask. Tell them you want to make Italian tomato sauce jars and they will direct you and tell you everything you need. You will need a big pot, a gas burner that hooks to the propane, the tomato sauce machine, the big tomato strainer, and everything you see in my video like pails, funnel, etc.
We purchased our machine at Nella’s in Toronto, but you can also look online or go in store and they will direct you best. Our electric tomato squeezer is this one: Nella 0.40 hp Electric Tomato Squeezer — Nella Online
Simply purchase Roma or San Marzano tomatoes when they are in season and remove the stem and any rotten parts. Then boil them until soft and the skins are falling off. Once they are boiled, pass them through a handheld food mill, which will remove the skins/seeds. Salt the sauce to taste (or leave it plain) and add it to a mason jar with fresh basil in it. Wipe the rim clean and close it with the lid and ring. Boil those 1-2 jars for 30 minutes in a pot of boiling water that is lined with a towel or paper towel so that they don’t move around or break. Take them out and flip them over lid-side down. Cover them with a towel and let them rest overnight. Make sure you hear a “pop” which is how you will know the lids are properly sealed after boiling.
Many Italians simmer and cook their tomato sauce first with other ingredients like garlic, but we don’t. We like to leave ours plain because we like to use each jar for different purposes like soups, stews, chili, and flavor as we cook. When we make pasta with meatballs for example, we take our sauce and simmer it on the stove with garlic, oil, onions, tomato paste, and make the “sugo” that way instead. Our sauce only has tomatoes, salt, and basil in it, and we add to it as we cook.
We put a blanket in the pot so that the jars don’t break or move around.
If you make them like us, jars of Italian Tomato Sauce will keep fresh in the pantry or cantina for 2 years. We still have sauce from 2019 and 2021 that’s perfect. Make sure you store them in a cool dark place.
We boil them for 30 minutes so that they seal properly and so that the sauce inside can cook more. Boiling is canning which makes the lid collapse and seals them.
The blanket retains the temperature of the sauce; this method has been used for generations and is most effective for us.
You can feed it to chickens, compost it, or even dehydrate it and make a tomato seasoning out of it. You would be surprised how much more sauce you can get if you pass the tomato skins through the machine 1-2 times.
Technically jars do not need to be sterilized before canning if they will be filled with food and processed in a boiling water bath canner for 10 minutes or more. Filled jars that will be processed in a boiling water bath canner for less than 10 minutes need to be sterilized first. With that being said, we always wash and make sure the jars are clean regardless.
We pass them once as our Italian Tomato Sauce is thick, but you can pass them 2 times maximum if you wish.
You can get food-grade pails anywhere, but we got ours at Nella and some at Rona.
No, you do not need to but we like to. Some Italians do and others don’t. Some also add garlic to sauce but we don’t.
Yes, you certainly can make Italian Tomato Sauce without a machine, but it won’t be exactly the same. You can roast the tomatoes in the oven and then peel the skin. It will be more watery and have seeds without a machine but it will still be delicious. You can also boil the tomatoes, remove the skin and seeds and pass them through a mesh strainer.
We do not, and haven’t for generations. I will leave the USDA guidelines here which states to add it in to balance the PH level for anyone that wants to: National Center for Home Food Preservation | Seasonal Tips.
Italian Tomato Sauce
Ingredients
- 3 bushels of Roma Tomatoes , or San Marzano
- basil for each jar
- salt to taste, some families leave out the salt completely
- 45 wide mouth one litre mason jars
- wide mouth rings and round lids
Instructions
- Buy the bushels of tomatoes. Take each tomato and cut off the green stem at the top. If anything is rotten on the tomato, we cut it off as well. Place the tomatoes in clean cold water and set aside.
- In the meantime, we get the gas burner ready and hook up the propane tank to it. Light the burner and put a big pot on top with water. Boil the water and once boiled, we add in the clean and cut tomatoes. Let them boil for 15 minutes or until they are soft, and the skins are falling off.
- Once the tomatoes are boiled, we take them out with a big metal strainer and place them in a basket that has holes. You can use anything that has some holes so that the water drains out.
- In the meantime, we get the electric tomato squeezer machine set up with two buckets on each end. One bucket will catch the peels and seeds and the other will catch the tomato sauce.
- We put the boiled tomatoes in the top funnel of the machine and press down with the tamper. You will see the sauce come out of the spout and the skins come out on the side. Once all the tomatoes have finished, we take the bucket with the peels and pass those through as well. We do this one time, but you can do it twice as you will get a lot of sauce out of the peels. We compost the peels after we have passed them through.
- Once the sauce is in the pails, we like to add salt to taste but you can also leave it plain as well. Always add salt a little at a time and taste and adjust.
- Now you can wash the basil leaves and dry them as well. I put mine through a salad spinner and add a small handful in each mason jar. We take a funnel and put it on top of the jar and use a small pot to scoop the sauce into the funnel filling each jar to the rim. You can also use a milk jug as well if that’s easier on you.
- Wipe the rim clean with a paper towel and tighten the lid. We dump out the water that the tomatoes boiled in and add fresh new water. We put a thick cloth inside the pot and fill it with water and let it boil. Once it’s boiling, we take the closed jars and put them in the hot water with heatproof cloves. You can also use canning jar lifter as well to place the jars inside if you have it on hand. The jars boil for about 30 minutes, we then take them out and place them lid side down onto a blanket. You should hear a “pop” and that’s how you know the lid is fully sealed.
- Cover the jars with a blanket (or a few) and let them rest overnight. The following day we flip the over and store them away. Enjoy for soups, stews, pasta, chilli, or anything you wish.
My family has been making our sugo this way for over 50 years as well! We use San Marzano tomatoes and it’s wonderful. There’s nothing like homemade!
Just bought 30 lbs of Roma tomatoes from a nearby local farm Desert Hills in Ashcroft BC and giving this a stir for the first time! Looking forward to it! First time 🙂 Thanks for the inspiration! Jodi
How exciting — you will have so much delicious sauce! Happy cooking!
So excited, this was great! I just picked up 4 bushels of Roma tomatoes, wish me luck!
Good luck Beth! Hope you have fun making the sauce!
This is so helpful! I had no idea how the sauce is made! I had heartburn with most of the sauces! Specially pizza sauce! I am going to try to make the sauce myself and use it fir oizza and meatballs
SO EXCITED
Wondering the weight on the bushels used for the 45 jar recipe
Hi Kim, a bushel of tomatoes should weigh about 50 to 56 pounds.