While the production line has finally ceased, my mom and sister have been hard at work over the last couple of weeks making homemade tomato sauce, using tomatoes from my sister’s garden. When myself and my cousins were smaller, my dad’s side of the family would come together to make tomato sauce, but once we all became older the tradition came to a halt. This year, however, my mom and sister decided they were going to take on the daunting task of making homemade sauce, and because I bore witness to how much damn work it is, I have a firm appreciation for anyone who makes it from scratch.
I wanted to visit Google to see if I could find some general tips pertaining to making a wicked homemade tomato sauce, and the following information comes from thechoppingblock.com.
“1. Sweetness: I don’t want my tomato sauce to taste sweet. I think most people would agree, and that is what stops them from adding something sweet to their tomato sauce. The goal here is to have a balanced sauce that tastes like tomato and not a sweet sauce.
- The first technique in developing sweetness is to cook the tomatoes. Think of cooking as simulating a ripening process – when you cook a fresh tomato it intensifies it and sweetens it. Canned tomatoes are already cooked so that process is halfway there.
- Sugar might be the most common way to sweeten tomato sauces. Sugar adds a direct pop of sweetness. Be sure to add small quantity at a time and taste after each addition so that you don’t end up with a sweet sauce.,
- Fruit and carrots are a very natural way to add mild sweetness, and carrots are my personal favorite for this. Peel them, dice or grate them and add them to your sauce. They can be pureed or left chunky. Fresh pears, dried apricots, currants or raisins can also be used the same way.
“2. Acidity: We don’t want our tomato sauce to taste too acidic either. Again, the point here is to bump up the acidity but in a balanced way.
- Wine is commonly used and easily incorporated into tomato sauce. Preferably white wine as red doesn’t add much in the way of acidity and can create an unpleasant color. Make sure to cook off the raw wine taste by cooking it for at least 5 to 10 minutes.
- Vinegar is a chef’s best friend and one of the secrets to complex and exciting flavors. The key is to start with a good quality vinegar which I discussed in part 1 of this series and to make sure it is completely cooked off. You shouldn’t sense vinegar is in the dish other than the complexity it leaves behind. If I use vinegar, I am generally adding it to a long cooking sauce and at the beginning of cooking.
- Citrus, typically lemon, would be used at the end of cooking since the acidity of citrus can cook out quickly. When you either want the fresh taste of citrus, need a little acidity correction at the end of cooking or are making a quickly cooked tomato sauce, lemon is great.
- Olives and capers are often used in tomato sauce. They not only add salt but acidity.
“3. Umami: Umami is an earthy component; we often associate the flavor with a great steak or piece of cheese.
- Tomato sauce often has either meat added to the sauce itself or has had pork bones, prosciutto ends, salt pork, sausage or ground beef simmered in the sauce during cooking. All of these punch up the umami flavor.
- Anchovy paste or Parmesan cheese rinds are secret weapons in tomato sauce. Again no one will likely know they are there, but they will wonder why your sauce is so intensely good!
- Mushrooms are a great vegetarian option for bumping up the umami.
- Tomato may sound funny to add to tomato but adding tomato paste, sun-dried tomato or even some canned tomato to a fresh tomato sauce can bump up the tomato volume.
“In addition to enhancing the natural flavors of tomato to boost the flavor of your sauce, there are a couple more really important flavor-enhancing techniques everyone should know.
“1. Evaporation or reduction is something we discussed in part 2 of this series so I don’t want to be redundant, but I felt I would be remiss in not mentioning it again. Tomato sauce deepens and intensifies the longer you cook it. Tomato sauces can be cooked in 10 minutes or for 4 hours, and they can all be delicious. Cooking sauces for a long time don’t inherently make them better, but it does intensify the flavor.
“2. Aromatics such as Soffritto, Mirepoix, the Holy Trinity and Refogado create a base flavor in sauces, soups, stocks and cooking at large. I could write an entire blog on this significant and foundational subject. Today however I have to keep the focus on tomato sauce and how soffritto is used to build flavor in it,” the web page explains.
Here’s hoping that this information can be of use to anyone out there who makes their own tomato sauce.
ontheedgeofeverything 