My Secret Tomato Sauce Ingredient

Hello, tender friends!

My vision of heaven includes a stock pot of homemade tomato sauce- the satisfying sound of simmering- and the smell of fresh sage, oregano, garlic and tomatoes.

And since it’s heaven, let’s get crazy and add some grilled cheese sandwiches! Is there anything more satisfying than dipping a crispy grilled cheese sandwich into homemade tomato sauce or soup? Even though this might mess with your idea of heaven, I hope this sauce will simmer on a rainy day, like this batch I made, because I love cooking something on the stovetop all day on rainy days.

Let me be transparent from the start: I rarely cook with the same slow devotion that my own grandmother did. The older I’ve gotten, the more I have appreciated her hand-rolled manicotti. (As an aside, manicotti translates literally as “little sleeves,” and isn’t it poetic that you stuff “little sleeves” when making homemade manicotti? The singular form is “manicotto“).

Making homemade food is a tremendous act of love that I didn’t properly appreciate when I was a kid. As I’ve become a mom and ensured my own son eats almost exclusively homemade food from the garden, I’ve come to understand the sacrifice. Being able to provide that for my Cub is a tremendous blessing, and I’m doubly grateful: grateful that God allows me to provide this for Cub, and retroactively grateful to my own grandmother. I only wish I had understood her sacrifice properly while she was still here.

Ok, that got surprisingly emotional. Let’s get to the sauce. Part of my goal is always to use as much of our own garden produce as possible. Adjust accordingly if you don’t have herbs growing for free in your yard because it does get expensive if you’re buying them. This is how to do it if you want to do what I did:

Sauté two large onions in your stock pot in olive oil (or butter) for about 15 minutes until lightly golden brown. I generally prefer butter for this, as even just a little bit of butter changes the flavor profile of the soup for the better. But if you are strictly paleo, olive oil also works fine. (Tomatoes are paleo, but technically fruit, so I suppose the quantity you consume will determine weather or not this is paleo for you).

Chop a squash and throw into the stock pot with the onions. This will bulk up the sauce, and I like the consistency that it adds. I don’t really think the type of squash matters, but I happened to use a lemon squash because that’s what I had in abundance. But I’m not a purest about what to add and just add whatever we have in excess. If you don’t grow summer squash and don’t have in abundance of squash, this step is not strictly necessary, as I have made it both ways.

Break three bay leaves in half and stick in the stock pot along with fresh sage, thyme, rosemary, oregano and an entire bulb of garlic. I harvested a generous portion of oregano and sage because those plants are at the end of their season. Bay leaves are a must have for me in sauce, and we buy them because we don’t grow them.

Add in a variety of tomatoes. Again, I use whatever we have in abundance, which included plum regal, San Marzano, and Amish paste tomatoes.

And now, for the secret ingredient, the little trick up my sleeve for those of you who also don’t use any sugar. Or should I say, the trick up my manicotto? Drum roll please….

Sun Gold tomatoes!

If you’ve ever eaten sauce prepared with sugar, you know that its flavor is difficult to match. This is the closest I’ve come because the Sun Gold tastes like a burst of sweet sunshine in your mouth.

I found this description of the Sun Gold online, and it’s one I wish I had written myself:

“The flavor of Sun Gold tomatoes is excellent, changing dramatically as the fruit ripens. The tomatoes start out with a snappy tartness and ripen to a sweetness that is almost like candy. Like many yellow-orange tomatoes, Sun Gold tastes almost fruity. Sun-ripened fruits can have almost a rich, tropical, citrus-like flavor, unique to this tomato variety.”

A food description, properly executed, is like poetry, isn’t it? I have a not-so-secret desire to get into food writing at some point, and descriptions like this inspire me. But I’m not a plagiarist and believe in giving credit where credit is due, so I found it at this link: https://www.homefortheharvest.com/sungold-tomato/#:~:text=The%20flavor%20of%20Sun%20Gold,tomatoes%2C%20Sungold%20tastes%20almost%20fruity

I let this cook down for about two hours until my desired thickness, with the lid off so the water could cook off. I’m going to avoid the very intense debate about proper cooking time in this post. Maybe we’ll tackle that another day.

There you have it, my friends! Loading up my basement freezer with mason jars full of homemade sauce is satisfying.

Can’t wait to open these jars up throughout the fall and winter, when the weather has chilled, and relive that burst of Sun Gold when we need it most!

That’s all for today, tender friends. Thank you for stopping by! I’ll be sharing when God taught me to call the things they are not as though they were in the midst of illness in Thursday’s post. On next Monday, I’ll share my experience at a recent “Women’s Refresh” ministry night, and how my understanding of what ministry was incomplete for years.

Thank you for sharing!

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