Leigh-Anne Harberย
In our household, we eat quite a lot of canned tomatoes. I add it to stews, it is added to Tuscan Chicken, it’s used in pasta sauces, and it is the base of our pizzas.
Every month, I would add about 4 cans of tomatoes to our shopping basket, but over the years, the quality of these tomatoes has deteriorated, and one day, while shopping, I realised I was done with wasting my money on these products.
The flavour was bland, it had started to give food a strange taste, and I decided it was time to learn how to make my own.
After going through a few recipes and adding my own twists, I came up with my own version of canned tomatoes.
This recipe has no added water and no added preservatives.
It is all just natural goodness, and if you seal it right, it will stay good for months (if you can resist eating it for that long!)
Use my recipe as a base for creating your own flavours, and I promise, you’ll never buy a can of tomatoes again.
Canned Tomatoes
Ingredients
Method
- Heat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius
- Dice up your tomatoes, your onions, and your garlic. You can chop it up finely or chunky, the choice is yours.
- Place your tomatoes, onions and garlic in a big enough roasting pan.
- Chop up the basil and place it on top.
- Sprinkle on the salt, pepper and herbs. Then drizzle the olive oil on top of everything.
- Without covering the roasting pan, place it in the oven and let everything roast until soft.
- Wash out your jars in warm soapy water while everything is cooking.
- Remove the tomato mix when done, and either can or blend and then can. Make sure that you do this while the mixture is hot and that you fill the jar almost to the top, leaving a small space.
- Take a knife and go around the edges of the jar, removing all the air pockets. If the bottle has air bubbles, the mix can begin to ferment and go bad.
- Place the lids (wipe away any spillage on the top of the jars before doing so) and either water bath the jars or place them back into the still hot (but not on) oven to seal.
