Are you up to your ears in tomatoes from your end of summer harvest?

Since tomatoes can be one of the easiest fruits to grow, we often find ourselves at the end of the season with so many tomatoes we don’t know what to do with. In order to solve this problem, and not waste any precious food, I developed a way of batch processing our abundance of these red little gems so that we could enjoy them throughout the winter in comforting tomato sauce recipes.

You could also process a bounty of storebought organic tomatoes in this way and enjoy the rewards during the off-seasons.

We generally love to process our Roma tomatoes in this fashion, however, in the past, we’ve used other varieties of tomatoes and they produced the same wonderful results.

Batch Processing Your Tomatoes for a Quick and Comforting Sauce to Use Later in the Year

This is the batch process I use for a quick and tasty tomato sauce to use on a night that I need a quick meal. *Tip -You can fill more than one sheet pan and if you have double ovens you can fill both ovens with your pans.

The Process for Batch Processing Your Tomatoes

1. Preheat over to 400 degrees.
2. First, you’ll need to choose your tomatoes, wash them and then grab some fresh basil and garlic.
3. Get out your 13″x 18″ half sheet pan and line it with a Silpat or parchment paper.
4. Cut each tomato in half lengthwise and place the seed side up on the sheet pan. Place as many will fit. If you have bigger tomatoes, that’s ok, just put what fills the whole pan. If you have smaller tomatoes, that’s ok. Just put what fills up the whole pan. You can even mix different kinds of tomatoes!
5. For one sheet pan, intersperse 5-7 whole cloves of garlic.
6. *Reserve the basil to place in the bag after roasting the tomatoes and garlic.
7. Drizzle coconut oil or avocado oil over the top of all the tomatoes.
8. Liberally salt and pepper your sheet pan full of tomatoes. I love this Himalayan salt.

Roasting Your Tomatoes

Once you have prepared your tomatoes for roasting, move onto this step.

1. Place sheet pan(s) in the oven for a half-hour to forty-five minutes until tomatoes and garlic have a little color on them and are wilted.
2. Let cool and place everything that is on the sheet pan (with a handful of basil) into a gallon size Ziploc bag.
3. Label the Ziploc bag with “Roasted Tomatoes and Garlic for Sauce” and the date.
4. Place Ziploc bags on a sheet pan in your freezer so that they lie flat and the contents will freeze flat.
5. Now you have the base for your epic tomato sauce on a moment’s notice!

How to Use Your Batches of Roasted Tomatoes, Garlic and Basil

This is THE BEST part!

On a night when you need a quick and flavorful meal, it’s a cinch to make a from-scratch tomato sauce using your roasted tomatoes.

1. Take 1 bag of prepared roasted tomatoes out of the freezer. It can still be frozen… no biggie.
2. Using a large saute pan put 1 Tlbs. Avocado oil or coconut oil in the pan on medium heat.
3. Empty contents of roasted tomato bag into the pan.
4. Add 1-2 Tlbs. organic Italian Seasoning and stir to combine.
5. I like to add 1 tsp. of raw honey to remove a little of the tartness from the tomatoes. You’ll need to adjust accordingly depending on your taste preference and what type of tomatoes you used as some tomatoes are sweeter than others.
6. Add 1/2 cup of homemade bone broth or water. *If the sauce is really thick you can add a bit more liquid. *If you don’t have homemade bone broth on hand, this is my favorite boxed bone broth.
7. Let this simmer while covered for 20 -30 minutes until bubbly.
8. With an immersion blender, blend up the sauce until it’s smooth. Cover and simmer for another 10 minutes.
9. Add any cooked vegetables and cooked uncured Italian sausage to the sauce and serve it over zoodles.

The Benefits of Batch Processing Your Tomatoes

• It’s so low-key and takes very minimal prep
• It doesn’t take very much time.
• I don’t have to peel any tomatoes.
• The clean-up is simple.
• The sauce results are amazing.
• The comfort I feel knowing my freezer is stocked with whole-food that will make a hearty, nutritious meal when I am short on time.

Enjoy Your Read-Made Batch Processed Tomatoes for The Best Tomato Sauce!

If you have tomatoes coming out of your ears, then you’re going to want to try this recipe and get your freezer stocked for the fall, winter and spring when homegrown tomatoes are scarce. It’s the simplest way I have found to process a gigantic amount of tomatoes with divine results.