Everything great in cooking starts with having a good foundation of flavor to build on. One of the cornerstones of cooking is building flavors on top of flavors until a sort of taste harmony is put together in a whole dish. If we take the time to focus on creating good foundations it helps assure that our dishes come out the best that they can be. The classic example of this is making stock – like chicken stock.
A stock is essentially the liquid essence of some chosen ingredient that becomes the foundation for so many delicious things – e.g. sauces or soups. A great stock will bring all sorts of flavor nuances to our cooking and as we add more goodies to the stock through the cooking process the dishes become more and more tasty. We should take a broad view of these foundations. Many things can be a stock or foundation not just boiled meat, vegetables and bones – Milk is a good example.
How to Make Tomato Sauce? Yep – Just Tomatoes.
One of the most important foundations to have in our repertoire is a simple tomato sauce. There are hundreds of uses from simple pasta dishes to chili to every kind of tomato based soup or chowder there is. And, it is so simple, that you can make yourself a supply that will last for a few months in the freezer. Defrost what you need and you are ready to go. Since this is a simple foundation or, unofficially, tomato stock, you can imagine that the ingredient list is simple – yep – just tomatoes. Sometimes this is called passata, or pureed tomatoes, but in this version, there is no pureeing, just heating the tomatoes then running them through a fine sieve to remove skin and seeds.
Basic Tomato Sauce
- 4 lbs of fresh tomatoes
- olive oil
- Quarter the tomatoes.
- Add the tomatoes. Bring to a simmer. Stir occasionally and don't be shy about breaking up the tomatoes as you stir.
- Simmer until the skin on the tomatoes fall off, the seeds are separated and the pulp is liquid.
- Strain the tomates through a fine sieve until all that is left is skins and seeds.
- You can use roma tomatoes of this recipe or the one that you like best. Roma will have less water in them, but other varieties can be used. When using sauce made from other types of tomato it may be necessary to reduce it a little longer when using it in a recipe. Off season, choose the tomatoes that you find with the most flavor.
- Freeze the sauce in 1 or 2 cup increments. This will make it easy to pull out small amounts to use as needed.
- This basic sauce can be used for all sorts of recipes from soups to chili to tomato based sauces.
- TIP: Want to cheat? Of course you can buy basic passata or tomato sauce. Try different ones until you find the one that you like the best.
There you have it. A simple foundation of tomato flavor you can use to create a huge variety of dishes.
Keep Eating! Keep Innovating!
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