The making of the Tomato Sauce family style

[17hornet 188]

Only by popular demand.....  of course.

So now I'm sucked in...... to make tomato sauce !   As usual I found out the night before the job...

But I love these family get togethers at the Inlaws..... Sauce day is here!


First up wash and sort the Roma's, check for any bad ones, cut out the bad stuff and move on.

Bag them up into mesh sacks ready for boiling to cook and loosen skins.

Bags into cooker and boil, really blanches the skins loose, cooks the pulp. In the copper at the right rear are full bottles being boiled, we did 200kg of Roma's, thats a few bottles LOL

More to come................

 

 

[17hornet 188]

Then out of the bag and into the tub ready for the 'juicer' !  It is the same mincer machine we use for doing the pig but it has different attachments, removes skin and seed, juice and pulp to the tub. The pot is our scoop to fill the machine hopper.

Into the juicer and separate the skins, which go thru twice more.

 

 

My trendy wife here, the kids were working hard too, a family affair

PART 3 coming up

[terryd 8,036]

good going and top stuff. Quite a production line you got there. Them roma are just the job for sauce like that. Was very pleased with them this year

[17hornet 188]

Season tomato juice with Basil and Salt

Bottle it into the 35 year old PickAxe beer bottles and cap ready for the second boil, these bottles are rare now and coveted for tomato sauce storage.

 

"Reloading" the sauce cartridges. LOL

 

Into the box ready to be boiled for the second time in the copper.

Boil the water first and then empty most of it into a bucket, stack bottles inside the 'copper'
and refill the water, boil for 20-30min.

 

Part 4 next...

[17hornet 188]

 

When the boil is done.

Let them cool off in the water, remove some water and then take out bottles, ready for the next batch.

So from here we let them cool off overnight and then store them in the Cellar, 270 odd bottles done and
a nice social family day where the kids learned how to make sauce the normal healthy way,
BIG pig out on wog sausage and sliced cured ham meats, cheese, some pork steaks, salads, wine and of course......
Home-made PASTA, with fresh Home-made SAUCE by the kids own hands.

There endeth the lesson, hope you enjoyed the trip.

 

 

[micky 3,325]

That was a good lesson mate and as soon as i can get hold of some  Roma i will give it a go.    Now , what do you do with Pigs Heads?                                                                                                                              

[17hornet 188]

Hi Micky, I did respond to you back at the Pig thread I did.

Oh poo, just checked it and I cant find the reply to you, dont know where it went as I did do it infront of my wife.

 

My in-laws have never roasted the pigs heads, nor have I. Generally it is broken up for the skin, meat, tongue, snout and fat and then processed into types of sausages.

I would imagine that if the skin was slit about 10 or 15 mm apart, course salt rubbed into it with a little cannola oil, rosemary sprigs pushed into the flesh and roast it like a thick leg roast, it would likely come up well, remember the bone is heavy and needs to heat to about 75C or 80C through the entire head, check with meat a thermometer.

The cheeks, meat at the back of the neck/head is very nice, crackle too.

Sorry I cant help anymore, best of luck Micky.

[17hornet 188]

2 hours ago, micky said:

That was a good lesson mate and as soon as i can get hold of some  Roma i will give it a go.                                                                                             

Any flavour filled acidic tomato that has a lot of internal flesh and little water will do the job, we buy from a grower or fruit and veg. Usually every Italian family is buying and it is peak season of growing, so prices are a bit inflated.

The sauce you buy from the Supermarkets, if you saw the tomatoes that go into that you would never buy it again, stuff you would think twice about eating it or feeding it to a pig. Same thing in the Wine industry, leafs, branches, spiders, bugs etc goes into the wine as the truck loads of grapes are machine crushed. 

[17hornet 188]

On 09/12/2017 at 20:48, micky said:

That was a good lesson mate and as soon as i can get hold of some  Roma i will give it a go.    Now , what do you do with Pigs Heads?                                                                                                                              

Hi Micky,

Nearly a year down the line and I have more info for you about the pigs head process with the family.

The head is boiled really well in just water and a little salt, it is boiled for a long time and you make sure that all the meat is cooked through, I cheated and cut out some cheek, snout and jaw muscle - excellent!!

The main reason to boil it is to remove fat and soften the skin. All the bits are removed from the bone of head and pretty much used in a sausage called
Cotechino which can be eaten direct or used in pasta sauce. Cooked sausage fill sometimes it is cooked after filling the skin by boiling, we just find it easier to cook then remove the flesh from the bone.

Hope that helps.