Classic tomato sauce recipe

Preparing our own tomato sauce is a very simple task and one that is worth repeating almost every week. It is one of those things that should never be missing in the refrigerator of every home, very versatile and with a multitude of applications in the kitchen. Although the boat ones are very helpful, once you learn how to make your homemade tomato sauce there is no going back.

You can go beyond the fried tomato, you can make the original recipe or a basic tomato sauce enriched with vegetables that provide a lot of flavor and help give a good texture. It can be flavored with fresh herbs, garlic, green or red pepper, carrots, thyme, oregano, add a little vegetable broth, give it a spicy touch or use other vegetables, depending on the season or taste. You can make several types of willows and freeze them in jars, to always have them on hand.

Preparation of Classic tomato sauce recipe:

Tomato sauce is used as an accompaniment to many dishes, pasta being perhaps the best known and most common for this, but it is also used in multiple preparations with meat and fish and derivatives, such as meatballs for example. This is a recipe with which to make a tomato and onion sauce, one of the most cooked variants of this well-known sauce, which is more complete when adding onion and very suitable for all kinds of dishes.

The basis of any tomato sauce worth its salt is the use of good quality tomatoes that are well ripe, so that they allow us to make a sauce with a lot of flavor and good texture. Of course, the best time is the tomato season, where we have the best tomatoes of the time and that shows when preparing this sauce, since although we have natural tomatoes all year round, the result is always better in that season. Canned whole or crushed tomatoes can be used instead, which can be a good option if we don't have good tomatoes.

When it comes to making the tomato sauce, the first thing we will do is wash the tomatoes well to make them clean of any dirt they may have. After cleaning them, we have several ways to continue making our recipe, the first would be to cut them into small pieces or grate them. Even if you prefer, you can peel them beforehand to cook them without the skin, which can be done more easily if we put them in plenty of boiling water for a few minutes, to be able to peel them more easily, so we get the tomato sauce to be without the pieces of skin. They can also be crushed in a blender and if after all we have skin or seeds we can pass it through a sieve with large holes or a special model that is usually sold in stores for these jobs.

Once we have all the chopped or grated tomatoes, we peel and chop the onions in julienne shape, and then we begin to prepare the tomato sauce, for which we will use a good size saucepan, which we will heat with a good drizzle of oil virgin olive. When the oil is hot, we are going to put the onions in the saucepan, and fry them over medium heat, with a little salt on top. When it is well poached and golden brown, add the tomato to the saucepan and season to taste and cook over a rather low heat until all the liquid from the tomatoes evaporates, so the sauce will take body and thicken little by little .

We will have the tomato and onion sauce ready in about 40 or 45 minutes or so, depending on the temperature at which we cook it. The slower we cook it, the better the result we will get, so if you're not in a hurry, cook it over low heat. We must stir from time to time to prevent the sauce from sticking to us, and at the end we will taste it to correct the salt level, and if we find it a bit acidic, we add a little sugar to remove the acidity, until the we leave to taste. At the end we have our tomato and onion sauce ready, which you can use in your pasta dishes, to serve with fish, meatballs or different meat preparations.

Servings / Units: 1
Approximate Preparation Time: 60M
Approximate Calories: 50

Ingredients:

500 g of minced meat (mix, chicken-turkey, to make them juicier).
3 slices of sliced bread without crust (about 80 g approximately) and a plate with whole milk to soak the bread crumbs
2 eggs
Salt, nutmeg, and freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
1 clove of garlic (if you like it with more flavor 2)
1 plate of wheat flour to pass the meatballs
Extra virgin olive oil (to fry the meatballs and French fries)
8 large potatoes
For the tomato sauce: 2 large cans of peeled natural tomato (780 g x 2), olive oil, 1 and a half cloves of garlic, salt, black pepper and a tablespoon of sugar.

Preparation of Homemade meatballs in tomato sauce:

Preparation of tomato sauce

1.- This sauce that I am going to explain is not only for this recipe, you can use it for a multitude of dishes. You can cook it in large quantities and the one that you over store in jars and reserve in the fridge.

2.- We open the can of peeled whole tomatoes and remove the excess liquid (the tomato water) since in this case we are only going to use the pulp. The water can be stored in a jar for another future recipe or put it in a saucepan and let it reduce for 15 minutes to have concentrated tomato paste.

3.- We put about 5 tablespoons of oil in a saucepan and while it is heating we peel the garlic and fillet it finely. Add the filleted garlic to the casserole, brown them and when they start to have color, add the tomatoes and cut them in half with the help of a wooden spoon.

4.- Let them fry until they reduce to less than half their size, about 30 minutes over low heat. If you are in a hurry you can do it in 15-20 minutes over medium-high heat, stirring continuously so that the tomato does not stick to the casserole (but the flavor will not be the same).

5.- Add a teaspoon of sugar to reduce acidity, a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper. If you like oregano, thyme or basil you can tune your sauce. We stir everything well combining flavors.

6.- We test and rectify with salt, although it is most likely that it is not necessary. We stir a few minutes, remove from the heat and finish by passing the sauce through the Chinese. This way it will be finer, although if you like to find pieces of tomato (I love it), skip this step. We reserve to join with the meatballs.

Preparation of the meatballs

1.- First of all, make the balls or meat balls, so that they all come out more or less the same. Season the minced meat, both chicken and turkey in a large bowl. We break the 2 eggs and add them together with the nutmeg. The slices of bread without the crust that we have previously soaked in milk for a few minutes. And finally the crushed or very minced garlic (without the inner sprout or trunk so that it does not repeat).

2.- We stir everything well with our hands until the ingredients are mixed. This will be the base of our future meatballs.

3.- Without fear we begin to work the dough making small (or large, that to taste) balls that we will then pass through flour. We leave them on a plate while waiting for the pan.

4.- We shake them a little to remove the excess flour and fry them in very hot extra virgin olive oil. About three minutes is enough and we reserve.

5.- We put the meatballs in the casserole with the freshly made tomato sauce. Heat over medium heat until there is a slightly thick tomato sauce (from the flour) for about 10 minutes.

6.- Let them rest for about 5 minutes while we fry the potatoes with the type of cut that you like the most.

If you do not want to accompany them with potatoes, a good mashed potatoes is an option or another alternative is to make white rice or pasta.