Homemade Tomato Sauce!

Today was my last day in Italy, and it was the best last day anyone could ask for!  Although it was raining off and on throughout the day, my host family, friends, and I made homemade tomato sauce.  It was such a long and tedious process, but it was definitely worth it!

To get started, Michela bought 100 kilograms of tomatoes, which is equal to about 220 pounds of tomatoes.  Before we could put the 220 pounds of tomatoes into the tomato machine, the tomatoes had to be washed, dried, and sliced.  Boy, did that take forever!  After the tomatoes were washed, dried, and sliced we placed them in pillow cases so that the water could drain.  Otherwise the sauce would be too watery and not very tasty.  After the tomatoes were drained, it was time to put them through the machine.  The machine created sauce from the inside of the tomatoes, and it spat out the outer part of the tomatoes.

There were actually 4 containers of tomatoes

washing, drying, and getting ready to slice

Slicing

Sliced!

pillow cases filled with tomatoes draining... they were everywhere!

Ran out of pillow cases

Tomato machine making sauce!

After the sauce came from the machine, it was time to bottle it all up!  We had too many to count glass jars to hold the tomato sauce.  Once it was all bottled up, it was time for sterilization.  In order for the tomato sauce to keep for however long it needs to keep, the sauce needs to be cooked.  We placed all of the bottled up tomato sauce in a large canister, which was filled with water.  Once the water comes to a boil, it boils for one hour to cook the tomato sauce in the jars.  After that, the sauce is ready for use or storage.

Just a few of the tomato sauce bottles

Time to cook the sauce!

With that gigantic canister filled with all of the bottles of tomato sauce, I am going to say that it just started to boil after being lit for almost 4 hours (it is 11pm right now).  It will boil for an hour, and then we will put out the flame.  Hopefully, the tomato sauce will be ready, so I can bring home a jar or two with me!

After a long and exhausting day of making tomato sauce, I can safely say that I am OK with not seeing tomatoes for a very, very long time.  Once the clean-up was done, we all relaxed and had a homemade lasagna, not with the fresh tomato sauce.  We did try out a batch of the sauce at lunch poured over the spaghetti.  You just add some garlic and salt to the tomato sauce, and it was absolutely delicious.  Making tomato sauce is extremely easy even though it takes a lot of time, but it is totally worth it.  Hopefully it will be cool enough to pack in my suitcase before I leave tomorrow morning!