The best tomato sauce

YIELD: Makes about 1 to 2 gallons (3.8 to 7.6L) of sauce, depending on the tomatoes
ACTIVE TIME: 2 hours
TOTAL TIME: 6 hours

Ingredients
 10 pounds (4.5kg) ripe plum tomatoes, preferably mixed varieties (such as
Romas, Amish Pastes, and San Marzanos), cut into large chunks, plus 15 pounds
(6.8kg) ripe mixed tomatoes, mostly plums with a small portion of other tomatoes
(such as beefsteaks), cut into large chunks
 3 tablespoons (45ml) extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing
 1 large yellow onion, minced (see note)
 3 medium cloves garlic, minced (see note)
 2 large sprigs fresh basil
 1 small tomato plant cutting with about 5 leaves (optional)
 Kosher salt

Directions
1. In a large stockpot, heat the 10 pounds plum tomatoes, covered, over high heat,
stirring occasionally, until tomatoes dump their liquid. Bring to a boil in covered
pot, stirring occasionally, and cook until tomatoes are softened, about 10 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 275°F (135°C) and grease several rimmed baking sheets and/or
baking dishes with oil. Using a food mill or a stand mixer's vegetable strainer
attachment, pass cooked plum tomatoes and all their liquid into a large heatproof
container. Discard skins and seeds.
3. Pour plum tomato purée into rimmed baking sheets and/or baking dishes, being
careful not to overfill them.
4. Carefully transfer baking sheets and dishes to oven and bake, checking every 15
minutes and stirring once purée begins to thicken, until a thick, spreadable tomato
paste forms, at least 2 hours.
5. Meanwhile, fill the same large stockpot with remaining 15 pounds mixed tomatoes
and cook, covered, over high heat, stirring occasionally, until tomatoes dump their
liquid. Bring to a boil in covered pot, stirring occasionally, and cook until tomatoes
are softened, about 10 minutes. (Work in batches if your pot can't hold all 15
pounds at once.)
6. Using food mill or stand mixer's vegetable strainer attachment, pass cooked
mixed tomatoes and all their liquid into a large heatproof container. Discard skins
and seeds. Measure out 1 quart (900ml) mixed-tomato purée and set aside.
7. Heat 3 tablespoons (45ml) olive oil in a large, wide saucepan over medium heat
until shimmering. Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until
softened and sweet, about 8 minutes. Add remaining mixed-tomato purée and
simmer, stirring occasionally, until reduced to a sauce-like consistency, 35 to 40
minutes.
8. Remove from heat, stir in basil and tomato-plant cutting, if using, and let steep for
5 minutes. Discard basil and tomato-plant cutting. Stir in oven-dried tomato paste
and reserved tomato purée and season with salt. Use as desired or freeze.
Notes
This recipe calls for 25 pounds of tomatoes and yields between 1 and 2 gallons of sauce,
since it's not much extra effort to make a lot and summer rolls around only once a year.
The sauce can be frozen for several months. If you want to make more or less sauce, the
recipe can easily be scaled up or down; cooking times may change, but the method
remains the same. This recipe calls for sautéed onion and garlic, but you can also
choose to include minced carrot and celery in the mix, or skip the sautéing step and
simmer the minced raw aromatics in the sauce. Or, you can leave the aromatics out
altogether and make this sauce with the tomatoes alone.
How to Make the Best Tomato Sauce From
Fresh Tomatoes
Daniel Gritzer
Let me get something straight right off the bat here: I'm not sure there's such a thing as
"the best" tomato sauce. Whoa, whoa, whoa, I can hear you saying already. First this
guy has the nerve to claim he makes the best tomato sauce, and then, before he gets
even two inches deep into his explanation of why it's the best tomato sauce, he's already
backpedaling. What gives?
I'll tell you what gives. I grew up in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; I currently work in Little
Italy; and I have spent a lot of time in Big Italy, so I know how much pride people have in
their tomato sauce. I also know how many different ways there are to make it, and how
many different ways there are to use it.
What I will tell you is that I've spent a lot of time researching, contemplating, and cooking
tomato sauce using fresh summer tomatoes, and I have some observations I'd like to
share that, taken together, make for what I think is one damned fine tomato sauce. Is it
the best? I don't know, but I can say it's the best I've ever made, and I've made my fair
share.

The Trouble With Fresh Tomato Sauce

[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

First, I want to admit something: Making sauce from fresh summer tomatoes has long
been an insecurity of mine, despite years of cooking experience, including working as a
sous chef in a Tuscan restaurant in New York and living and working on farms in Italy for
extended periods, elbows deep in fresh-picked tomatoes and the sauce we made from
them.
The reason why: There are two primary goals when making fresh tomato sauce, and
they're at odds with each other.
 First, the sauce should taste like it was made from fresh tomatoes, which means it
should have the bright, fruity aroma and flavor of uncooked (or barely cooked)
fruit. If we don't have this, we might as well throw in the towel and stick with
canned tomatoes 365 days of the year.
 Second, the sauce should have a good, sauce-like consistency and have deep,
sweet notes, which means cooking off much of the tomatoes' natural water
content and caramelizing the fruit's natural sugars. Otherwise, it's going to be too
thin and tart.

The trouble is that retaining the tomatoes' fresh flavor means minimal cooking, while
getting rid of the excess water content and caramelizing the sugars means extended
cooking. Everyone has a different solution to this dilemma. Some discard the watery
seed jelly and cook only the tomato pulp, which I refuse to do because the seed jelly has
way too much flavor to waste. Others settle for a minimally cooked sauce that heats for
just about 25 to 30 minutes, but I find this to be a compromise that fails to deliver the
deep, sweet flavors we want. Another approach is to divide the sauce into two parts, one
long-cooked, one quick-cooked, and then blend them back together.

Of those approaches, the divide-and-conquer concept has always made the most sense
to me, but I'd never settled on exactly how to do it. To figure it out, I started with the first,
obvious question: What kind of tomato should we use?

You Say Tomato, I Say, Which One?

The first rule of making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes is to do it in the peak of
summer, when tomatoes are not only at their absolute best but also at their absolute
cheapest. In the winter, when the only tomatoes available are ghostly versions of their in-
season selves, it often makes more sense to use canned: Canned tomatoes tend to be
made with fruit that's riper than anything we can hope to get out of season, and they're
generally cheaper, especially when you account for the amount of water weight that fresh
ones have to shed before they become sauce.

But there's still the question of which fresh tomatoes to use when they're at their peak.
The general wisdom says to use pulpy "paste" tomatoes (i.e., plums), which are less
watery. Those guys yield more sauce per pound of fruit and require a shorter cooking
time to get rid of the liquid, which helps retain some of that fresh tomato flavor.

But are plum tomatoes really the best way to go? And does it matter which kind of plum
tomato you use? I bought four different types of tomato at the farmers market: three
different varieties of plum tomato, and then common beefsteaks, which are basically
never recommended for sauce due to their juiciness. There are far more varieties of
tomato than this, but it isn't practical to test them all, and, frankly, most other varieties,
such as most heirlooms, require paying a premium—making them a prohibitively
expensive option for sauce.
Four varieties of tomato for sauce testing. From left are three types of plum tomato—San Marzano,
Amish Paste, and Roma—and then a beefsteak at far right. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

The three types of plums I got—San Marzanos, Amish Pastes, and Romas—are good
examples of how much variety exists even within one category of tomato.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Look inside and you'll get an idea of how their pulp-to-seed ratios differ. The San
Marzanos, at left, were small and firm, with a relatively high amount of seed. Next, the
Amish Pastes were mealy and soft, with the lowest amount of seed. The Romas were on
the firm side, with a fair amount of seed. Last, the beefsteaks had plenty of watery pulp
surrounding multiple seed compartments.

I cut each type into chunks and cooked them separately to see how they'd turn out.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Above are the Amish Pastes; note how much pulp there is, and how little water.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

And these are the beefsteaks. Tanta acqua! Clearly, after all this water cooks off, there's
not going to be much sauce left, which is why it doesn't make a lot of sense to make
sauce from these kinds of tomatoes, unless you like paying hard-earned cash to humidify
the air in your home with tomato vapor.

But, since I'd already started, I took the beefsteaks to completion, straining out the skins
and seeds and cooking the purée down. I did the same for all four types of tomato, and
was surprised at how drastic their flavor differences were.

 The San Marzanos made a purée that was bright and tart and not too sweet.
 The Amish Pastes produced a purée that was sweet, mild, slightly tart, and fruity.
 The Romas were sweet and floral, but not very tart.
 The beefsteaks had a great balance between sweetness and tartness.

Alone, each had its strengths: one more tart, one sweeter, one fruitier, another more
fragrant. But as I tasted them all, what I realized was that I didn't want any one of
these tomatoes in my sauce: I wanted all of them. Tasting them one by one, each
was good, but combining them into a single spoonful made the whole thing pop.

To be clear, the flavors of my tomatoes are particular to the ones I bought. You may buy
San Marzanos that are sweeter and less tart, and Romas that are tart but not sweet. It
depends not only on the variety but also on where they were grown and other specific
environmental conditions. It's hard to predict with certainty the exact flavor profile and
balance of sweetness and tartness any given tomato will deliver, so the best way to
arrive at a balanced sauce is to combine multiple types.
“I'm willing to add a little extra water from a small portion of beefsteaks or other juicy
tomatoes if it means I can get a little bit of their flavor in the mix.”

The majority of the tomatoes should be pasty plums—ideally a variety of types, if you can
find them—because they're more cost-effective. But I'm willing to add a little extra water
from a small portion of beefsteaks or other juicy tomatoes if it means I can get a little bit
of their flavor in the mix.

A mix of tomatoes, mostly plums, is the way to go. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Prepping the Tomatoes

Once I'd settled on using a mix of tomatoes, the next step was deciding on how to prep
them. Most folks agree that an abundance of skin or seeds in a tomato sauce is not a
good thing, but there's more than one way to remove that stuff from a sauce.

Some recipes call for discarding the seeds altogether, but, as I've already mentioned, I
like the flavor of the jelly the seeds are suspended in too much to do that—in fact, it has
a tartness that I think is essential to creating what will ultimately be a sauce that has a
good balance of sweet and tart flavors.

As for the skins, one option is to score the tomatoes, quickly blanch them, and then peel
off their skins. This is fine for small quantities of sauce, but I felt strongly that I wanted to
select a method that would work for large batches—we are doing this in peak tomato
season, so we might as well make a lot, and peeling each tomato individually isn't
practical.

The method I know best is one I used when working on farms in Italy, where we would
make vats of sauce each week in the peak of summer. The tomatoes are cut into
chunks, cores, skins, stems, seeds, and all (absolutely no need to exclude anything
except the odd bad spots you may find); dumped into a pot; and set over high heat until
they dump their juices and come to a boil.*

* Yet another method involves baking the tomatoes first at low heat to drive off some of their water,
and only then quickly cooking them into a sauce. The reason for this has to do with how temperature
affects enzyme activity and flavor, but for large quantities of sauce, I also find this method impractical.

A few more minutes, and these babies will be ready for the food mill. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Then they're boiled for about 10 minutes, just long enough to soften the pulp. It's a quick
enough cooking time that the fresh tomato flavor isn't lost, but long enough that the pulp
will pass** through a food mill or vegetable strainer.

** In fact, in Italian, this watery, fresh-tomato purée is called a passata ("passed").

According to Harold McGee in On Food and Cooking, this quick-boil method allows
pectins to thicken the sauce much more effectively, requiring less overall sauce reduction
(and therefore producing a fresher-tasting sauce!).
The food mill, a simple, old-fashioned tool, is an easy and efficient way to strain seeds and skins from
tomato purée. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

This does require having either a food mill or some other type of mechanical strainer, but
for large quantities of sauce, it's a minimal investment that will save a lot of time. Plus, it's
one of the easiest ways to remove seeds and skins while keeping all the good stuff in the
sauce.

Once we have our tomato purée, the next question is what to do with it.

Cooking the Sauce: The Quick and the Red

One of the goals I outlined above for fresh-tomato sauce is that it should retain some of
that fresh-tomato flavor. So I knew I wanted some of my tomato purée to be cooked
minimally. But one of the things my initial test batches made me think about is how
damned delicious long-cooked tomatoes are. You see, when I was cooking down my
beefsteak-tomato purée, I had to cook it a long, long time to get rid of all of its excess
water, and by the time it was done, it was sooooo delicious: dark red, intensely sweet,
and oh so rich. I just kept going back to it with a spoon.

To get that flavor into my sauce, I consulted several cookbooks, and settled on the idea
of turning a portion of the purée into a tomato paste–like extract in the oven, called
estratto in Italian. It's a technique described well by Paul Bertolli in his fantastic Cooking
by Hand, and by Rosetta Costantino in My Calabria, and, while it's traditionally done in
the southern Italian sun, a low oven is the easy alternative.

Because so much evaporation is required to reach the concentrated stage I was going
for here, I used only paste tomatoes for this portion of the recipe—I'd rather let the small
portion of beefsteaks in the batch contribute their water elsewhere than have to cook it all
off here. Overall, a little less than half of my tomatoes went toward this component (10
pounds out of 25).

The method is simple: Pour the purée into rimmed baking sheets or baking dishes
(basically anything wide that will maximize surface area and therefore evaporation), and
set them in a low oven, stirring from time to time, especially as it begins to thicken, until a
rich, sweet extract is formed. Don't even think of taking a shortcut with store-bought
tomato paste here: This stuff is way more flavorful than any canned tomato paste
I've ever tried.

Wide, shallow vessels speed up evaporation of the tomato water. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

The low-and-slow reduction allows the tomato sugars to caramelize, creating an

intensely sweet, concentrated flavor base for the sauce.
I'm not sure if it made a difference, but I staggered my trays so that they wouldn't block the
evaporation of the ones below. [Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Just one tip: Keep an eye on these, and stir them frequently. I learned the hard way that
the thin layer of tomato paste can burn quickly, even at low oven temperatures, if it's left
unattended for too long.

With most of my remaining tomato purée, about 15 pounds of mixed tomatoes, I used a
more classic stovetop method, cooking it down for about 45 minutes to a sauce-like
consistency. But before I did that, I set about a quart of the fresh-tomato purée aside,
thinking I would add it back at the end for a blast of fresh-tomato flavor. I had gotten the
idea while thinking about the common practice of adding a splash of high-quality
uncooked olive oil at the end of cooking to get its great taste into the dish. I figured, if it
works for olive oil, why shouldn't it work for tomatoes?

What that meant was I ended up with three sauce components: my rich, delicious tomato
paste; my basic cooked sauce; and then my very fresh-tasting tomato purée.
From left, the long-cooked tomato paste, the regular tomato sauce, and the fresh-tomato purée.
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

Here they are side by side, and the color alone speaks volumes about how each is
different. In terms of absolute quantities, I had only about a quart's worth of both the
concentrated paste and the fresh purée; the regular sauce, seen in the middle here,
produced about a gallon and is the backbone of the sauce. The idea was to enrich the
bulk of the sauce with the deep, sweet, caramelized notes of the paste, and then finish it
with the bright, fresh flavor of the barely cooked purée, to create layers and layers of
flavor that hit every note.

Correcting the Bulk Sauce

So, now that I've explained my three-pronged approach to the sauce, we're basically
done, right? Nope!

Just because I have my amazing tomato paste and my fresh-and-fruity purée doesn't
mean I'm just going to accept that the bulk of the sauce is going to taste merely good,
especially if there's anything I can do about it.

The first trick is one we've all seen a million times: Toss in some basil. It's no accident
that basil is usually included in canned tomatoes. Canning requires intense heat and
cooking, which kills any trace of fresh tomato flavor. A few sprigs of basil help add back a
little freshness. I added some basil to a portion of my bulk sauce while it was still warm
and let it steep.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

It worked, adding a fragrant, floral, anise-y scent to the sauce that was totally wonderful.
At the very least, it's worth steeping the basil in the sauce.

Some folks, though, also add some tomato leaves to their sauce. Writes McGee,
"Tomato leaves have a fresh-tomato aroma thanks to their leaf enzymes and prominent
aromatic oil glands."
Tomato leaves: worth adding to your sauce? [Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

In case you're worried that the leaves are poisonous, no need to fear: Not only are they
not toxic, but they can bind with cholesterol and possibly lower how much of it our bodies
absorb. Bonus!
Don't put this much tomato leaf in your sauce; trust me, just a few leaves will do. [Photograph: Daniel
Gritzer]

I tried it out, and, aside from the risk of putting way too much in the sauce, found that it
does indeed add a grassy, green flavor that can help offset whatever fresh notes are lost
from cooking the tomato. The only hard part for most of us is getting our hands on
tomato plant cuttings. If you can't, rest assured the basil does more than enough on its
own—honestly, if I had to choose between the two, I'd take the basil. But if you can do
both, each will help in its own way.

The Question of Aromatics

One other major concern for the bulk sauce is whether to add aromatics like onion and
garlic, and, if so, how to do it. Some recipes call for cooking the aromatics first until
they're soft and sweet (but not browned), while others have you dump the aromatics in
raw and simmer them in the sauce as it cooks.

I tried it three ways: with raw aromatics, with sautéed aromatics, and with none at all.***
In my tests, I used just onion and garlic, which are the most common, though you can opt
to include others, like carrot and celery—each will alter the flavor of the sauce somewhat,
and whether or not you include them is a matter of personal preference.

*** Actually, four ways: I also did a batch with crushed red pepper, and loved the subtle warm heat it
added to the sauce.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Sautéing the aromatics first produced a sauce that was sweeter and richer, with the
aromatics melting more fully into the sauce.
[Photograph: Daniel Gritzer]

Raw onion and garlic produced a cleaner-tasting sauce, with fresh-vegetable notes, but
the overall flavor and texture were less integrated. To avoid the texture issue, you can
use Marcella Hazan's method of submerging raw onion halves in the simmering sauce
and then fishing them out whole.

When blind-tasting these two sauces on spaghetti, more of my colleagues preferred the
sautéed aromatics to the raw ones, but opinion wasn't unanimous.

My third batch, without any aromatics, was also delicious, and in some ways I preferred
its pure tomato flavor, which goes to show that if the sauce is good enough, you really
don't need to enhance it much. On that note, I also preferred my sauce without
cheese, which shocked me, because I always put cheese on pasta with tomato sauce,
but this sauce really is that good—too much other stuff just gets in the way.
[Photograph: Vicky Wasik]

There are many, many ways to make very good tomato sauce, but if you're going to take
the time to prepare it using fresh tomatoes, the key to creating a balanced, rich, and
layered sauce that tastes fresh, yet also deep and complex, is to think of it as a blender's
art: Make tomato purée and divide it into parts, then slow-cook one portion of it into a
thick, sweet, caramelized paste; cook another portion into the bulk of the sauce, flavored
with basil, possibly tomato leaves, and aromatics; and save a small portion of the barely
cooked purée to add at the end for a bright, fresh note, similar to how we often finish
dishes with a drizzle of uncooked olive oil.

Exactly how you use the sauce will determine final steps: On pasta, for instance, you can
finish the pasta in a pan with the sauce and some of the pasta-cooking water, adding a
little raw olive oil, a pat of butter, or a splash of cream at the end, depending on the final
flavor you want.

It may be a little fussy, but it's also the first tomato sauce I've made that I haven't wanted
to top with cheese. And really, I don't even need the pasta, either. Just give me a spoon.