Doing the tomatoes, making the sauce

[cutterboy]

Monday my wife and I put a big batch of tomatoes through the Squeezo strainer to get a puree to make spaghetti sauce. We grow two kinds of large paste tomatoes for this purpose.

All set to get started


 
The Squeezo strainer separates the skin and seeds from the pulp.


 

 
All done. We have a nice big bowl of tomato puree.


 
Now cooking it down to thicken it, adding garlic and mint and whatever else my wife uses to make her magnificent pasta sauce.


 
Then she cans it and puts the jars in the canning cabinet ready for great pasta meals all winter long.

The flash of the camera makes the sauce look orange. Actually it is red.


 

 

 

  Let's sit down and eat.....Cutter

[Raider Bill]

Nothing better than Sunday red gravy made fresh!

[GAB]

Cutterboy:
My hat is off to you sir.  You have a lot more patience than I do.
We have one of those squeezo's and I had the tapered auger modified by having a hex welded to the end where the crank is mounted.  When it comes to using the squeezo I leave the crank in the box and go get the electric drill with the right size nut driver and use that to operate it.  In an hours time we can do 10 gallons of tomato puree or more.  The tomatoes are going through so fast that my wife can't keep up feeding the squeezo.  Two FYI's we do this operation outdoors so clean up is with the water hose, and using a nut driver allows me to disconnect as needed to get rid of the seeds and skins or to change the tomato puree receiving container which is frequently a 5 gallon ss container to start.
GAB

[Walnut Beast]

Looks amazing Cutter and impressive

[21incher]

I put a motor on mine and it has been used every year since we drove up to Troy Bilt in 1982 to buy it. Has processed tons of tomatoes and without the seeds sauce has the best flavor. Cooked tomato seeds ruin good sauce. Here is an old video showing the frame I built for it. 
Home built squeezomatic making Seedless Tomato Sauce - YouTube

[cutterboy]

GAB, that's a great idea running the crank with an electric drill. Like you we do all that outside and clean up with a water hose.

21 inch, nice video, nice setup. No hand cranking for you or GAB.

[rusticretreater]

I opted for the electric strainer awhile back.  Its kinda small but hey, no hand cranking.

One thing I learned to do was to drain the excess water out of the tomatoes.  I put a metal colander inside a larger stainless steel bowl, cut up the tomatoes and put them in the colander, cover with shrink wrap and sit in the fridge for a day or two. The excess water in the tomatoes drains out and you have much thicker sauce right from the beginning.  Reducing time is cut way down.   And if you use a 70,000 btu camp stove, its reduced pretty darn quick.  Just keep stirring!

[SwampDonkey]

Yep, made a few jars of pasta sauce and 12 pints of delicious home made ketchup to. I use a tomato mill for pasta sauce, which is motorized as well. Also has reverse with a pulse switch. It's a 2 HP brute and will chew as fast as you can feed. ;D When doing pasta sauce I use a dip strainer to leave excess water behind. If I freeze some tomatoes that releases a lot of water, as clear as tap water. With the ketchup you leave the water in as the brine is added to the softening tomatoes. Then it's run through my food mill, but could just as easily use the tomato mill to do it for large batches. The food mill removes the seeds and skins as well, but is one you turn. If I was going to do more than a dozen pints of ketchup, I'd use the tomato mill. My mill is a well known brand made in Italy.

[21incher]

With the cost of lids and having the chamber sealer,  this year we froze all our sauce that saved us a lot of time and money.  

[cutterboy]

Yes the sauce does freeze well, but with us freezer space is the issue. I have two chest type freezers in the basement but they are always full this time of year with broccoli, corn, swiss chard, chicken, meats and of course ice cream.  ;D

[21incher]

We have 2 chest freezers and one upright stuffed now. Was a good year and ready for the next pandemic.

[thecfarm]

We do a little sauce.
We just have the Ball Fresh Tech one. It looks like the ones posted, but plastic.
On a small scale it works for us.
No way the wife could crack a handle. That's why she got it.
She had shoulder surgery, one year, so I had to do it all, with her telling me what to do.