Storing pasta sauces

General Cooking tips

Moderators: KG Steve, Chantal, Tigger, peter

phelgan
KG Regular
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2010 10:16 pm

Hi all,

We've had a good crop of tomatoes this year and can't keep up. I've been making some pasta sauces which typically we've frozen, but space is limited!

With the most recent batch I have put them in clip top Kilner jars (the ones with the rubber seals), having prepared these as I would for jams or marmalades (washing in warm soapy water and heating them in the oven). Given the high acidity of most tomatoes, does anyone know if this is this sufficient to keep the sauces in a cupboard?

Cheers,

P
Westi
KG Regular
Posts: 5908
Joined: Thu Oct 30, 2008 4:46 pm
Location: Christchurch, Dorset
Has thanked: 671 times
Been thanked: 238 times

Hi phelgan! Welcome to the forum.

I just use the kilner jars for mine as they have the plastic lining in the lid and as long as the plastic is intact it should be fine, but I use them pretty quickly so not really tested for long. I have though been looking at the American canning method (no cans in sight, just jars). They gently boil the filled sealed bottles in water after filling & I wonder if this would be an extra protection to allow them to store longer. My thought being the boiling process would heat the metal lids and shrink them to seal better & most times there is a bit of air on the top & it would also kill any yeast or the like in that air, which should allow them to store even longer. I do plan to try it; but not this year as I got blight so not as many tomatoes.

I've seen lots of recipes & the boiling times & instructions on Pinterest - along with possibly hundreds of other tomato recipes from around the world. I'm sure we would all appreciate your feedback seeing you have the extra crop to experiment with this year!
Westi
User avatar
Primrose
KG Regular
Posts: 8054
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
Location: Bucks.
Has thanked: 37 times
Been thanked: 281 times

Welcome pheigan. We have a similar issue of too many tomatoes for our freezer space and have been making tomato sauce too. I' think the most space saving way of freezing the sauce is to do it in plastic bags spreading the sauce bag out so that it can be frozen flat and each bag stored flat on top of each other although this is isn't always easy to do.

As Westi mentioned I'd d be a little wary of storing surplus sauce in jars without them being sterilised first as mould can build up. I once oven dried a large batch of surplus tomatoes with herbs and packed them in jars, covered with oil to seal out any air and was bitterly disappointed to lose the lot to mould I'd been careful to properly sterilise the jars first but it obviously wasn,t eniugh so by all means experiment but unless you can go the whole way sterilising the jars with their contents in them you may risk losing them.

This may work as a very short term solution but even so, before using I'd still bring any tomato sauce to the boil separately for a couple of minutes and check it's ok before adding to other ingredients.
Last edited by Primrose on Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
retropants
KG Regular
Posts: 2055
Joined: Wed Feb 22, 2006 3:38 pm
Location: Middlesex
Has thanked: 106 times
Been thanked: 108 times

Ive made pasta sauces for years with my tomatoes. I roast them with garlic etc, process through a passata machine, prepare jars by heating ones that have been through the dishwasher (choose ones with a safety pop seal lid) in the oven at 100 deg C for at least 30 minutes. Add the hot tomato sauce to hot jars, screw on lids as tight as you can then place them in a tray of boiling water and put them in the oven for another 30 mins at 100. Retighten the lids and leave to cool. As they seal, the vacuum seal will pop, they will be airtight. Done properly with clean equipment they will store very well. I just had the last jar of my 2018 vintage sauce a couple of weeks ago.:)
User avatar
JohnN
KG Regular
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Hookwood, near Gatwick
Been thanked: 2 times

I just wonder if, rather than go through the complicated procedure with Kilner jars, one can't just freeze the sauce in plastic boxes, or even bags?
User avatar
Primrose
KG Regular
Posts: 8054
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
Location: Bucks.
Has thanked: 37 times
Been thanked: 281 times

I think the problem john with our enquirer is that her freezer space for such sauces has proved limited so she needs alternative options for ensuring her surplus tomato crop doesn't go to waste. The average fridge freezer doesn't provide a massive amount of freezer space for an average family if you grow your own veg as well as needing to stock up on provisions for bad weather, etc.
User avatar
JohnN
KG Regular
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Hookwood, near Gatwick
Been thanked: 2 times

Point taken, Primrose, I'd missed the first comment about freezer space. My first purchase after I got married and we bought a bungalow with a garden was to buy a freezer - 16 cu ft Beekay chest freezer, which I once nearly fell into!
User avatar
Primrose
KG Regular
Posts: 8054
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
Location: Bucks.
Has thanked: 37 times
Been thanked: 281 times

My experience if you grow yiur own is that you can never have too much freezer space !
The only problem is that the bigger the freezer the more organised and disciplined you have to be at maintaining an efficient inventory.
items can get lost and buried in them for years !
Proper labelling is essential too. My biggest act of shame was hurriedly throwing an unlabelled bag of gooseberry purree into a pan of minestrone soup thinking it was chicken stock. Too late I realised that the bags looked fairly identical.
sally wright
KG Regular
Posts: 722
Joined: Tue Nov 29, 2005 7:32 pm
Location: Cambridge

I gotta ask Primrose; what did the soup taste like?
Sally Wright.
User avatar
Primrose
KG Regular
Posts: 8054
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
Location: Bucks.
Has thanked: 37 times
Been thanked: 281 times

You'd have to ask the bugs and beetles Sally. I poured it onto the compost heap. I figured it was only vegetarian matter after all. - just in a different form!

Learned to be more careful about labelling after that . I freeze many of my liquids (stock and blitzed soups ) in one pint milk bottles which are stronger than plastic bags but their opaque texture can make some liquids rather indistinguishable so a marker pen solves that problem and there are no labels to fall off.
User avatar
JohnN
KG Regular
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Hookwood, near Gatwick
Been thanked: 2 times

Primrose, what a pity you chucked the mixture - it would have been a great soup. I always add an apple to my leek and potato soup, it gives it a "kick"!
User avatar
Primrose
KG Regular
Posts: 8054
Joined: Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:50 pm
Location: Bucks.
Has thanked: 37 times
Been thanked: 281 times

Oh that's interesting John. I do ad chopped apple into my fresh mixed vegetable salad mixture but it would never have occurred to me to add it to Vegetable soup mixture. I have leeks in the vegetable patch waiting their turn for harvesting (green beans, tomatoes and courgettes currently crying out for priority usage!) so will try and remember to try an apple when next batch of leek and potato soup is made.

Out of interest, do you use a cooking apple like Bramley or a dessert type?
User avatar
JohnN
KG Regular
Posts: 636
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Hookwood, near Gatwick
Been thanked: 2 times

Doesn't really matter what type of apple, Primrose. If it's one from our garden then it's a Bramley, but if a bought one it will probably be a Cox or similar.
User avatar
Geoff
KG Regular
Posts: 5574
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2005 5:33 pm
Location: Forest of Bowland
Been thanked: 129 times

You can buy replacement screw top lids for ordinary glass jars more cheaply than Kilner lids. You can heat the jars in the microwave before pouring and give the filled jars an extra blast in there before you cap them. We store lots of tomato this way after slow cooking down in a casserole.
larson12
KG Regular
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Dec 17, 2021 5:20 am

I don't have a vac sealer, but I've had good luck using zip-loc freezer bags. I put about 900g of sauce in a 1-gallon bag, and push out all the air -- it ends up about 3/8 of an inch thick. I keep a couple of large commercial cold-packs in the freezer, and I sandwich the sauce bag between them (in the freezer), so it cools down *very* quickly. I think the quick freeze helps prevent damage to the tomato solids, and avoids excess moisture on thawing. Also, when I open a new can, I stir often so my left-overs don't start out wetter than the sauce I put on the first pies. I found a lot of important tips from [url= https://thebarbec.com/
]thebarbec[/url]. This site has huge number of recepies , preservation methods , BBq and grilling secret techniques.
Post Reply Previous topicNext topic