Tomato sauce

Hey Veeky Forums,

I'm going to cook some tomato sauce for stock. If you'd like to give me some tips on how to improve my recipe I'd really appreaciate that.

Starting with mise en place.

First. chop your hot dogs longwise

Please DO NOT use that glass chopping board.

>tomato sauce for stock

???

I'd suggest actually using tomatoes to make tomato sauce.

Yeah, don't put any vegetable in there. Keep it simple.
There are two main approaches to tomato sauce.
1) keep the flavour of the fresh tomatoes
or
2) coock for a long-ish time (at least 1h) to develop different flavours (allow for lysis of complex proteins and carbohydrates into simpler compounds; e.g. tomatoes develop a lot of glutamic acid)

I go for 1) when tomatoes are very good, though the fresh flavour is not gonna last long

get a decent cutting board, not one that ruins your edge at the first cut
get an actual chef's knife
prepare a proper mirepoix - 50% onions, 25% carrots, 25% celery, all grated or chopped as finely as possibly
get some actual tomatoes and some tomato paste
if you want to make something like ragu bolognese without meat you dont add garlic.

Done with that.
Going to sauté first onions and carrots. Then adding garlic before adding the canned tomatos

It's not ragù without meat.

didnt use that, dont worry.
im using canned tomatos.
i like it more with a few vegetables.
i could add some celery. will do now.
im not gonna add any meat. only the veggies, canned tomatos and spices.

Also I'm using a good knife.
It was a gift of one of my coworkers

Sautéd onions alone first with a pinch of salt. Then added carrots and celery and at last the garlic

At last added the tomato product.
Gonna let this simmer for 1-2 hours.

will do a bit of cleaning up in the meanwhile.
i havent yet decided if i should run this through my blender once it is done cooking. i usually dont mind the bigger pieces of carrots in my pasta. what do you think?
also for seasoning: i was planning to go with salt, pepper, sugar and oregano.

oh, sry for replying a little late.
i mean that i will make enough that it will last me for 1-2 weeks.

Run half of it through the blender, don't need to use much sugar. Add some red pepper flakes and bay leaf of you have it. Good job!

Thanks!
I will divide it in half before using the blender and use some pepper flakes at the end. I dont have bay leaves, though... I really need to extent my spice collection.

What are you having with it? Regular spaghetti noodles? Any other vegetables or protein involved?

>pic related
Tortellini filled with spinach and ricotta and some pecorino

Looks great. I like to put a couple anchovies in my tomato sauce but usually only if I'm having them with regular spaghetti noodles. Plus I always add a shit ton of red pepper flakes. Now I'm hungry!

Also, adding some tomato paste with the vegetables to cook for a few minutes before adding the canned tomatoes is always a good idea

Yeah, I actually have some here but I always forget when I could add it.

It's happily bubbling...

>sugar
No. Its supposed to be slightly tangy.

i would only add it if i think its too sour. but i figured that the carrots are reducing the acidity quite a lot so you're right, it probably isnt even necessary.

not that user, thought you were going to use tomato sauce as a soup base

yeah, i figured that much by now. i thought you could use stock as a synonym for storage in that sense.

Does anyone know what this dark oily stuff could be that ascended in the pot?

why is knife blue

Oil probably, you can skim it off if you want.

it was born this way. dont bully it.

i only used vegetable oil. what could be responsible for the color change?

if you're asking why it's dark reddish it's because of the carrots and "tomato produce", which I'm assuming has other non-tomato additives

nope its just sieved tomatoes.

well, oil's color is probably from sauteeing the carrots then. Seems normal to me

you already got enough sugar from the carrots. people usually add carrots or sugar, not both.

you might have better results adding all of that at once next time, and cutting smaller pieces. carrots celery and onion, chopped right, should cook at about the same rate. carrots take a bit longer but it's not really noticeable.

i just stirred it back in but if its coming back up i will skim some off and taste it.

It's fine if you keep the oil, it's not like you poured in a whole saucepan of oil in which you boiled a whole onion.

Alright. Also Ich don't want to wait any longer as the carrots are tender now.

I seasoned it with salt, black pepper and oregano now and will transfer some of it in my blender now. Then I will fill everything in the storage containers and I'm basically done.

Okay, there it is.
The big glass in the middle is the part I put in the blender and you can't really see it here but it kinda had the consistency of a stew afterwards. So when I use that I will probably add some more liquid

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread and gave me tips on how to improve.
I will upload some more pictures later today when I heat some of the sauce up and serve it with the tortellini I mentioned earlier.

Good work user, enjoy the fruits of your labor

also freeze the stuff you dont use in the next 2 days

Thanks!
I will

That was the finished plate. It is absolutely delicious!

i thought the point was to blend half the sauce and then remix it with the rest

i can do that now when i feel like it

>tomato sauce
>spinach and ricotta tortelloni
>pecorino

What a mess. Too many ingredients. It's gonna taste like a big pile of everything you had.
If the tortelloni are any good, have them with just a drizzle of sage infused butter or olive oil, a light dusting of cheese and black pepper.
Eat the tomato sauce with regular noodles or the thick ones like fettucini.

>no quarter cup of olive oil

Add some celery next time.
Also Ja Tortellini have a lot of additives, you might want to use the chilled ones. These sauces pretty much depend on whatever tomato product you use so i hope you didn't use Ja chopped tomatoes.

You guys want the biggest secret trick to a legendary tomato-based sauce?

Caramelized onions.

They're totally broken down by the time you're done caramelizing them, and if you blend a part of your sauce they go perfectly into that.

They will add such subtle richness, sweetness, and depth to your sauce that you will never go back if you can avoid it.

This also works amazingly with chilis.

Fpbp

>No half cup of canola oil to simmer roughly chopped onions in.

but i did add celery, see thanks, i will keep that in mind and try it out when i get the chance.

You can get a lot more of an interesting flavor by adding tomato at different times.

Some roasted, blackened tomato added in the beginning + some tomato cubed and sauteed with the mirepoix lightly + some pureed tomato added after turning the heat off.

how to get roasted tomatoes? roast them in the oven?

Yeah, I just quarter them and put into a roasting dish along with some onion and a little olive oil + red wine. Let it roast covered untilt eh tomato starts to 'wilt' then remove cover and let it go until parts turn black.

how long does this usually take?
can you just do this under the broiler to speed things up a little?

I usually do it while the mirepoix is cooking / deglaze the mirepoix / making stock, so it takes a while but it's not like the whole thing takes any longer. A broiler would probably work, but the flavors wouldn't be as complex.

hello my german friend

Guten Tag.

i was actually thinking about making noodle dough myself next. i might try it out over the weekend, then i wouldnt have to buy the factory-made ones.