Vegan Tomato Sauce Recipe
Delicious. All purpose. Perfectly right for pasta, pizza, bread stick dipping, you name it.
I like to make a fairly large batch then freeze it in 1 cup portions for later use.
I find it ultra handy when I'm exhausted, yet dinner still calls.
It's best with heirloom tomatoes, but you could use organic on the vine toms as well.
'Nuff said...
Need:
- 1-2 Tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1/2 white onion, finely diced
- 2 cloves garlic, finely diced
- 4 medium heirloom tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 1 can organic tomato sauce
- 1 tablespoon dried basil leaves
- 1 teaspoon salt (or more to taste)
- 1 teaspoon pepper (or more to taste)
- 10-12 fresh basil leaves, julienned then finely chopped
- 2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Do:
Heat a cast iron pot to med/high heat and add a little olive oil.
Add onion and garlic to the pot and saute until just soft. About 2-3 minutes.
To that, add your tomatoes and cook on med/high until very soft, about 3-5 minutes.
Add tomato sauce, basil, salt and pepper. Stir then cover and reduce heat to low.
Let cook at least 45 minutes but 1 hr plus is better. Stir intermittenly.
Add fresh basil leaves to the pot. Stir then, using a hand blender, blend sauce to eliminate most of the lumps. You can leave some for texture. Alternately you could also transfer half to a blender or vitamix, blend then return to your pot.
Add balsamic vinegar then stir and let sit for a minute so flavors can incorporate. Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed.
At this point your sauce is ready. If you are going to serve, off you go.
If you are going to freeze, allow sauce to fully cool. This will take a while. If you don't have time for that, transfer it to several smaller dishes to cool. Transfer about 1 cup portions to quart sized freezer bags then double bag. You could also use another freezer safe container.
Freeze on its side and defrost when you need it!
Enjoy!