Let me just start off by saying, I’m not a gatekeeper, but if I was to gate keep, It’d be this recipe. (its that good)
Its full blown harvest season and I’m bringing tomatoes in by the bucket loads.
I waste no time and rinse them off, throw them in a bag, and plop them into the freezer. This method is great for all things sauce. It reduces the mess from having to blanch, cold bath, peel, core and chop. The skins literally fall right off, and a lot of the water inside of the tomato ends up squeezed out of the tomato so this reduces the amount of time you have to cook down sauce.
It should be noted that this blog post wont walk you through how to pressure can, but will just give you the recipe on the sauce. I plan on doing another post on water bathing tomato sauce, and then giving you a recipe similar to this one on taking that sauce and making a in the moment spaghetti sauce.

I dont even core them before tossing them in the freezer because the core generally releases really well once thawed. As you can see from the photo below the core is on the right and the meat of the tomato is on the left! It works wonders, not only that Im not at the will of tomato when its time to can, I can preserve on MY schedule. Which, if you’ve ever preserved food, you know the luxury of being able to have a vegetable that can be canned later.

I put all the tomato is an old fashions sauce maker, mine is literally and “antique” or, at least, it was picked up from an antique store. You can buy one here or use your kitchen aid tomato harvester, like this one. Unfortunately, I didn’t heed the warnings of not sticking things down the chute and I broke mine. (face to palm)
This works well, you can see the seeds stay on top and the juice gets pushed through the strainer, landing in the pot, I put it in the sink so its lower for me while I crank the wheel vs. being on the stove. (I use this for my berries while making jam and its great)

From here I chop everything, all the veggies, and put it in the pot and then I generally use a kitchen aid hand held blender and chop things up just a tiny bit more this way. You let it cook for 30 minutes.
For this recipe you absolutely need a pressure canner, if you don’t have one I highly recommend getting one. Don’t be scared, you’ll be amazed at the world that is opened up to canning when you get one! Below is the recipe.

I will say that this sauce is slightly runnier (but this doesnt bother me at all, I actually prefer it) If you want it thicker just cook it down.
It should be noticed that every other spaghetti sauce will not compare to this one. Your whole family will love it! So here it is the long awaited “Aunt Jenny’s Spaghetti Sauce” I mention on instagram and I had hundreds of people asking for it. However, I have changed it a little bit from what she does but its so good! Savory just like spaghetti sauce should be!
Spaghetti Sauce
Equipment
- 1 pressure cooker
- 1 Vegetable strainer
- 1 large stock pot
- 1 kitchen aid hand held blender
Ingredients
- 20 cups Tomatoes (about 40-50 tomatoes)
- 3 large onions
- 5 green peppers
- 5 6 oz Tomato pastes
- 3 tbs brown sugar
- 20 cloves garlic minced
- 5 tsp basil
- 5 tsp oregano
- 5 tsp salt
- 3 tsp thyme
- 1/2 cup olive oil plus an extra dash
Instructions
- Harvest your tomatoes and use a vegetable strainer or harvest to sauce the tomatoes
- chop all the other vegetables
- add seasonings, salt, sugar and olive oil, pastes
- you can use the kitchen aid blender to chop a little bit more any big chunks of vegetables.
- Stir often to make sure nothing is cooking to the bottom
- Cook 30 minutes
- Quart Jars 25 minutes at 10 lbs of presser
Super excited to try this recipe. Sounds delicious. I’ve been waiting for you to share 🙃 you mentioned the seeds stay in the top as the juice gets pushed through the strainer, are all the seeds left out?
I prefer the tomatoes seeds to be left out! This is just preference, and often what you see in a typical spaghetti sauce.
My daughter has a good spaghetti sauce snd she just freezes it in containers .
Thats a great option! We unfortunately dont have freezer space due to the amount of meat that we end up harvesting each year, so canning is the best way for our family! I have froze spaghetti sauce in a pinch and it worked great!
So excited to try this! I have been needing a good recipe for all our tomatoes I have bagged up in our freezer! About how many quarts does this recipe yield?
about 6! sometimes 7 if my tomatoes are huge! so excited for you to try it! You’ll never want to make another sauce!