Homemade Tomato Sauce with the KitchenAid

Tomatoes are in season and cheap!

Look at these beautiful tomatoes we found at the farmers market!



















We got the KitchenAid Food Grinder Attachment, KitchenAid Fruit And Vegetable Strainer and the KitchenAid Food Tray Attachment as a gift for our wedding! They are really incredible!

The fruit and vegetable strainer attaches to the food grinder to make applesauce, tomato sauce, baby food or mash pretty much any fruit or vegetable. The tray attachment is very handy to place all your vegetables on when making sauce.

This sauce is a really simple recipe-Set up all the parts of the KitchenAid, wash your tomatoes, and push them into the strainer, can or store your sauce. The hardest part of this recipe was setting up the KitchenAid, which, I have to admit, was a little daunting. But it is nothing you can't handle!

Ingredients
Tomatoes, lots of tomatoes, preferably roma tomatoes ( I used about 3/4 of a regular plastic grocery bag, mostly romas, and a few other varieties mixed in)
Garlic (no need to peel)
Fresh herbs (I used fresh rosemary and thyme)
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil


Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Pour a generous amount of olive oil on a cookie tray. Remove the little stem on the tomatoes. Cut the tomatoes in half. Place them on cookie tray. Flip them around a few time to make sure they are covered in oil. Add the garlic, fresh herbs. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook the tomatoes for about 10-15 minutes, until the tomatoes are soft and start to pop. Once the tomatoes start to break down, turn off the oven and turn on the broiler. Broil under open flame for a few minutes until the tomatoes are lightly charred. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.














Setting up the Fruit and Vegetable Strainer
Take the Food grinder out of the box. It should come 5 objects: a metal spring shaft, a white plastic worm corkscrew, a straining cone, a white plastic housing box and a clear plastic cover.



Attach the KitchenAid Fruit and Vegetable Strainer to the food grinder
Remove the cover nut and metal driving plates, cross blade and worm from the box.



Add the shaft to the food grinder. Push it in
firmly.

Place the worm over the shaft.


















Place the straining cone over the whole worm shaft.

















Secure the whole device by screwing in the cover nut. Dont twist too tightly-you will strip the screw.





































Attach the grinder to the KitchenAid Mixer

Now,  add the grinder device to the stand mixer. Loosen the thumb screw and remove the cover on the stand mixer. Pop on the attachment, moving it back and forward as needed for it to be secure. Tighten the screw again.










Place the straining cover over the straining cone (this will ensure your kitchen doesn't turn into a tomato explosion when you are making the sauce). Last, place the plastic clear splash guard on the top of the straining cover.















Set up your food tray

Add the food tray to the top of the whole device.




































Your setup should look something like this:


















Place two bowls under the strainer: one will be to collect the tomato puree as it comes out, and the other will be to catch the tomato skins and seeds as they come out.












By this time, the tomatoes should have cooled off enough to touch them. Carefully add the tomatoes to the food tray, making sure not to spill any liquid that collected in the pan.
















Once all the tomatoes are on the food tray, turn on the mixer. Turn to speed 1 to start, and then move it up to speed 4.

With the food pusher, gently push the tomatoes down the shaft. The tomato juice should come out of the strainer, with no seeds or skin. It should then fall into the straining cover and drip down into the bowl below it.










You should be left with beautiful fresh tomato sauce.

The skin, seeds and pulp of the tomato should start popping out of the other end (have a smaller bowl there to collect the skin, seeds and pulp and use to make tomato pickle). You can either discard them or use to make something else. I was thinking either sun dried tomatoes, tomato bread or South Indian Tomato Pickle. I opted for the South Indian Tomato pickle!

Place your tomato sauce in a glass jar to refrigerate. Or can immediately using a pressure cooker! Eat this Classico!

Homemade Tomato Sauce

There are basically three ways of making tomato sauce:

Method I: Skin, peel and dice the tomatoes by hand
Method II: Blanch the tomatoes in hot water to remove their skin then cut them up
Method III: Use a food mill or food grinder to crush the tomatoes

You can use any type of tomato you want to. Roma tomatoes are traditional and quite tasty! They are also the easiest to peel, as they have a smooth bulb like shape. Unfortunately, they can also be rather expensive! They are cheapest in the summer, so buy a bunch at your local farmers market in the summer and make some sauce!

I have made sauce all three ways now. If you have a food mill or food grinder, Method III really is the easiest way. You can make a lot of sauce this way!  But such devices are expensive and take up room!

Method I is the traditional (and in my opinion best)  method, but it is very time consuming. Also, if you don't have Roma tomatoes, then it gets difficult to peel them (some tomatoes have bumps, crevices and odd shapes that don't lend themselves to easy peeling!)

This recipe calls for Method II-blanching the tomatoes to remove their skin and then cooking them. I find it a pretty even compromise between taste, time and convenience. This is a relatively painless method, but you don't get much sauce--usually enough for 2 people for 2 days. But it serves its purpose!

This time, I shortened the recipe by making less. It worked out wonderful! The key is not to seed the tomatoes, as that takes way too long and you loose most of the soft tomato flesh.

The tomatoes and herbs were fresh from my garden which made it very delicious!


Ingredients
3 large tomatoes, fresh (you can use more if you have any)
2 large tomatoes, fresh (you can use more if you have any)
2 bell peppers, preferably red, cut in half, deseeded and destemed
Fresh tomato paste
3 cloves of garlic, whole, skin on
1/2 red or yellow onion, diced
Pancetta, or ground beef, lamb or bacon (optional)
Rich Dark Chicken Stock or vegetable stock
Red Wine
1 or 2 bay leaves
A big bunch of fresh herbs (oregano, lemon thyme, basil, parsley and rosemary)





Directions
Boil a big pot of water.

Take 3 tomatoes and wash. Make four small, shallow incisions with a sharp paring knife from the top of each tomato to the bottom, cutting thinly through the skin.

Place the tomatoes in the boiling water. Let the tomatoes cook for 1-2 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon. If you dont have a slotted spoon you can jab a fork into the tomato on the stem side and submerge in the boiling water.

Immediately run under cold water and the skins should peel off fairly effortlessly. Set aside.


Heat up some olive oil in a cast iron pot. Add the pancetta, bacon or other meat. Cook for a few minutes, until their fat is released and the meat is cooked.










Add the onions and stir fry for a few minutes, until the onion loose their raw taste.

Chop up the 3 skinned tomatoes and add them to your pot. Be sure to add all the juices. Stir fry for a few minutes.

Add a little chicken stock and red wine and turn off the heat.






Take a cookie sheet and grease with olive oil. Add the red bell peppers, 2 tomatoes, and 3 garlic cloves.  Pour some more olive oil on all the vegetables. Set the rack in your oven just below the broiler. Set the broiler in your oven to high and broil for several minutes, until the tomatoes and bell peppers are charred. Turn and repeat. Remove from oven and let sit for a few minutes.

Once the bell peppers have cooled slightly, add them to a food processor. Add the tomatoes. Remove the garlic from their skin (they should just pop off) and add to the food processor. Blend all the ingredients until smooth. You should see little black flakes in the sauce from the charring of the bell peppers.

Add the blended tomatoes and bell peppers back to your pot. Reduce the heat to low and simmer. Add your herbs and continue to cook.

At this point, you can adjust with adding more stock or wine. I also add a little bit of tomato paste to thicken up the sauce.







If you have any fresh herbs, add them to the sauce. I had fresh basil, rosemary, lemon thyme, regular thyme, sage and parsley growing in my back yard garden, so I added all of them to the mix!