Spaghetti Sauce

[mandieg4]

Last summer my DH worked with a guy who had vegetable farm. Several times during the summer he would have a couple boxes of tomatoes that didn't get sold at the farmer's market so he gave them to DH instead of throwing them out. When we'd get these boxes I'd have to stop what I was doing and can them quick before they would spoil. Anyway, long story short, I have 88 quarts of quartered tomatoes in my pantry. Is there any reason why I can't use those jars to make spaghetti sauce and then can the spaghetti sauce? Second question, the recipe I found on the USDA site calls for sugar and oil, can I leave those out safely?

 

[Dace]

Since they are already preserved and shelf stable, why do you want to take on another large project?

My thought would be just to leave them as is and when you want spaghetti sauce, just make it.

Sorry, that is probably not the suggestion you wanted!

I do not see any reason that you can't re can them, I just wonder how much it would further damage the integrity of the tomato.

 

[Javamama]

I'm sure you could, but wouldn't that be alot of work? I would just puree them as needed to make one batch of sauce at a time if it was me.
I have no idea about the sugar and oil. Are you pressure canning or water bath canning? How much acid is in the recipe?

 

[meriruka]

If it's an option, you could make a batch of sauce with the sugar & oil and freeze what you don't use into meal size batches?

 

[mandieg4]

I had planned on just making sauce when I need it, but in 3 months I have yet made a single homemade batch. Spaghetti is usually my last minute meal, if I've forgotten to take meat out of the freezer or we get home too late to make anything else so making sauce from scratch kinda slows that process down some. And other things I use sauce for are time consuming enough as it is. In other words, I'm too lazy

I'd like to freeze some, but my deep freeze is full of meat. I think I will freeze a few bags for my fridge freezer though. If I use good freezer bags I may be able to through the bag in a pot of boiling water to thaw while my noodles are cooking.

My thought was if I spend a day and use up about half of my tomatoes making sauce then they are more likely to be used up before canning season starts again.

 

[freemotion]

Go ahead and do it then. I always leave the sugar and oil out of my sauce. It comes out great!

You can cook some of the sauce down a bit to make it thicker, and increase the herbs (oregano, basil, especially, and maybe a bit more garlic) and make a batch of pizza sauce, too. A pint jar will sauce a cookie-sheet-size pizza generously. Or if you don't want to cook it down, you can add tomato paste to thicken it.

I also make ahead and freeze bread dough rolled out for pizza, with parchment paper in between and stacked on a cookie sheet for protection. I put it all in two layers of trash bags and put it on top of my freezer. Of course, you'll have to eat some meat before you can think about doing this, but it makes for a very quick homemade pizza.

 

[ducks4you]

You COULD open the jars, make some sauce, and use new lids to can the sauce. I did just that with grapes when I experimented with grape jelly last year. Some of it was emptied and canned twice. There is so much acid in those tomatoes that it's hard to have your sauce go bad, unless you can it with meat or cheese.

here's hoping for that many tomatoes THIS YEAR for me!!!