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How to make your own marinara sauce
Prep + cook time: 2 hours 30 mins
Makes: 2.2 litres, approx.
Ingredients
2 celery stalks, chopped
2 onions, chopped
1½ tbsp garlic, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil
3 kg ripe tomatoes, rinsed, cored and coarsely chopped
¼ cup sugar
1 tsp dried oregano
1 bay leaf
½ cup basil leaves, torn
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
¼ cup lemon juice
**salt and pepper to taste
Method
Gently cook the celery, onion and garlic in the oil in a stockpot until soft. Add the chopped tomatoes, sugar and herbs and simmer, stirring frequently, for 90 mins, or to your desired thickness. Blend or process and return to pan.
Stir in the balsamic vinegar and lemon juice and season with salt and pepper.
Bottle while piping hot in hot sterilised jars (see below), leaving 1cm at the top. Run a long bladed knife down the inner sides of the jar to release air bubbles and seal with hot sterilised lids. Store the bottles out of direct sunlight.
To sterilise lids and jars
Preheat oven to 120°C. Place clean jars in oven for 15 minutes. Boil lids in a pan of simmering water for 10 minutes. Use tongs to handle hot jars and seals.
Important safety note
If home bottling, do NOT use low acid tomatoes (such as yellow tomatoes, Roma and some cherry variants) or add low acid ingredients such as mushrooms, courgettes or other vegetables. A PH of 4.6 or lower is required to prevent botulism. Commercially manufactured sauces are bottled at higher temperatures than can be achieved at home and acidity regulators are added to maintain their safety.
Tip:
If the lids aren’t concave when cooled, the jars haven’t sealed. Open, reheat the sauce, jars and lids, and reseal.
If adding mushrooms, capsicum, courgettes or other vegetables to the base sauce, it must be frozen not bottled. Freezing sauce flat in resealable bags saves space and helps the sauce defrost quickly.
This first appeared in Food magazine.
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