Preparing Tomato Sauce: A Family Tradition

We're currently located on 66th street in Bensonhurst, where we're at the end of summer and it's time to process tomatoes for our tomato sauce. We have a bunch of bushels and tomatoes back there, and I'm about to get busy on Friday and Saturday mornings. These are plum tomatoes, also known as Roma tomatoes, which produce the best sauce due to their high pulp content. We have 10 bushels of tomatoes, with each bushel weighing 60 pounds, totaling 600 pounds of tomato.

I don't remember the first time I made tomato sauce in my family; it's always been a constant part of our tradition. As I reflect on my childhood, I can recall helping my mother and other female relatives prepare sauce for pasta dishes. The process was often a communal effort, with everyone pitching in to chop, sauté, and season the sauce.

The preparation of tomato sauce is not an easy task; it requires patience, skill, and attention to detail. We start by chopping the tomatoes, which can be quite labor-intensive due to their large size. Once chopped, we sauté them in olive oil until they're soft and fragrant, then add various herbs and spices to enhance the flavor. The sauce is simmered for an extended period to allow the flavors to meld together.

One of the most crucial steps in making tomato sauce is ensuring that it's not too acidic or too bland. We achieve this by adding a pinch of salt and a few tablespoons of sugar, which helps balance out the acidity of the tomatoes. Additionally, we often add red wine vinegar, which adds depth and complexity to the sauce.

In years past, we would sometimes add basil to our tomato sauce for an added layer of flavor. However, about two or three years ago, we stopped doing this due to concerns about preserving the sauce's natural flavor. Instead, we now prefer to season the sauce when it's ready to be consumed, as this allows us to control the level of flavor and acidity.

After preparing our tomato sauce, we store it in a cool place in the basement for about two weeks before canning it up and placing them into cases. We cover each jar with towels to allow it to cure for a short period of time, which helps preserve the sauce's freshness. There is an exception to this rule: fresh tomato sauce made by my mother is not subject to this process.

One of the joys of making tomato sauce is sharing it with family and friends. This year, we had four generations of Pinellas working together in the kitchen, each contributing their own unique skills and expertise to the process. The result was a delicious and authentic tomato sauce that brought everyone joy and satisfaction.

We've decided on our pasta dishes for tonight's dinner: rotini, ricotta, sausage, and peppers, along with some fresh eggplant from my mother's garden. We'll be adding a sprinkle of parmesan cheese to finish off the dish. The aroma of freshly cooked eggplant is wafting through the air, filling the kitchen with an irresistible scent that signals the start of our meal.

Our family has been making tomato sauce for generations, and it's a tradition that we cherish deeply. We take pride in passing down this recipe to younger generations and ensuring its continuation for years to come. Tonight, as we gather around the table to enjoy our homemade pasta dishes, we're grateful for the love, care, and dedication that goes into making each jar of tomato sauce.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyeah she smells them all to make sure that really oh yeah well you can tell it smells funky don't add it it ruins it smells funky don't add it we're on 66th street in bensonhurst it's the end of the summer now so this is the time of year where uh we make tomato sauce basically we process them put them in cans and we have tomato sauce for the whole year so the whole family is together right now in the alley we got a bunch of bushels and tomatoes back there i'm about to get busy friday saturday morning these are plum tomatoes also known as roma tomatoes these are the ones that that produce the best sauce they have the most pulp in it so we have 10 bushels of tomatoes each bushel is 60 pounds so we have 600 pounds of tomato i honestly don't remember the first time that i made tomato sauce in my family it's always been a constant in my life we've already went over how to cut the tomatoes three different times everyone's still doing it their own way and in quarters or in halves well some people cut off the top to me cutting off the top is a lazy way you got to go in and core it out yeah look at how much you're cutting off though that you don't need to and what do you do watch and learn my friends yeah watch and learn yeah look at that you're taking off the whole freaking top of the tomato you know what's funny about this every single year we've been doing this since i'm i just turned 36 years old there's still freaking debates on how to do simple things like cutting the timing everybody's got a myth everybody's arguing about a certain way to do it every single year it doesn't change i find that to be hysterical we need cutters geo we need you to cut what are you doing i'm just finished receiving okay if you don't put a little fire under them everybody just sit around socializing meanwhile there's so many tomatoes to cut well i'm in the family for 38 years and i've always made tomato sauce with them i think it's something that they used to do in sicily and it just became a tradition that they bought over here we just cut them in half because then they go through the machine if there's a part like this might be a little hard you know just take the top off just to take a quick peek to make sure the inside of the tomato is good this is rose our cousin a primary tomato cutter she's a wonderful woman a great cook thank you she was here at 7 30 this morning we were not i kept telling you everybody so this became a tradition for her too when she got married i'm finding my groove right now yeah that's great yeah oh god look at this this guy's back tina put your shirt on this guy thinks he's 11 years old again in brooklyn on his bicycle oh yeah you want to come and take a look at the sauce see if it's ready it's time to go check this sauce we're going to check the thickness of it the smell the taste i don't want too much that's it i'm going too high that's great so what my cousin mike is doing right now is he's stirring the cut tomatoes um the ones that we just cut over there we threw into the pot and we're cooking them down as soon as you get the tomatoes in it's really important to kind of stir them and get them cooked down a little bit because they'll start to burn once these are cooked down then we run them through the machine the machine will spit out a tomato sauce that looks sort of like this like a little bit lighter you know more watery at that point now geo will stand over here and just continue to mix this and this is where like on a hot day and stuff you know it gets like it feels like a lot of work because you sweat bandana came over yeah that's a different it's better it's better to sweat on the bandana than inside the tomato sauce frank you remember when i used to get upstairs in the apartment and about 4 30 in the morning out here michael scream yeah no no come down i go 4 30. i will go over oh all right i'll beat that down a little bit he was down here set doing everything already oh my god i made it down like about 6 6 30 but i i couldn't do 4 30. i'm like my grandmother i needed my i need to get my rest i need my beauty that's the liquid gold what my father's doing right now is he's taking the excess tomato which all that that's really good stuff he's just kind of scraping it off of the machine and making sure that all the good stuff gets down into the pot every once in a while it'll like squirt up on you up i think i should have went with the all red like my father and maybe next year we'll make some tomato shirts to this basically where the sauce is right now um it's still in a little bit of a raw state so we're going to throw that into the hot we're going to continue to cook that until it's thick oh going still going no going still boiling reducing nicely though beautiful the bottom feels good feels perfect amazing smells good it's got to be hungry that's smell-o-vision it looks good yeah right yeah consistency is nice though yeah right how does it taste it's great i think it's another five gallon bucket it's good the sauce is really good one this step is just about being careful you know you don't want to burn yourself these tomatoes are extremely hot in the years that i remember in the past we put basil in the jar i guess what a couple years ago we stopped doing it yeah a few years ago um i think it's always best to season it when you're ready to eat it essentially these tomatoes are not you know it's not like a tomato sauce that you're ready to open up and just make pasta with you know you still have to you know chop up some onions garlic you know herbs whatever your way of making tomato sauces this is just a jump off point how many jars would we get out of all these looking at about somewhere in the 200 200 job bracket so after this process then we store them in a cool place in the basement for about two weeks these tomatoes are canned up they're still super hot um we packed them up into the cases and kind of stack them up in here and then we take like a bunch of towels just like these and we and we put them over the top for them to go through like a curing process there is one exception to the rule of not curing the sauce and that's the fresh tomato sauce that we eat that my mother is preparing right now upstairs when we made sauce my mother always made the sauce and we sat around the table and we tried the new sauce we always um you know we look forward to it so these kids are used to it we've always had it and it's like when there's no sauce it's like a panic we only have 12 jars left we have to be careful because we're not doing it again until next year very beautiful that's what i'm here for the muscles yes yeah give it a stir with muscle man let's get the basil nice very nice that's is that is that homegrown this is from your yard yeah from your parents it looks great it smells nice i i've been blessed on my mother's side my aunts were both amazing bakers and like really really talented and did an amazing job and on my father's side my grandmother and my aunt mata two of the most talented cooks that ever come across so she whatever is in the fridge she whips up always something amazing i have these beautiful eggplants this one thing my mother told me when you buy eggplant always get the real green top when you get as green as this that means there's no seeds i'm gonna dice them and then we're gonna sprinkle them on our pasta i never knew that trick with the green top you didn't know that no thank you lemon water fresh eggplant cut up gonna eat good tonight wow this looks delicious it is perfect it's perfect no it's sweet it's delicious so we got the sauce going what are the next steps to kind of finish up dinner we're gonna have pasta we're gonna have the rotini we're gonna have ricotta and we got our sausage and peppers all right we got the eggplant in here cooking see how they're looking i'm all do you ready for these okay you got it yeah all right unbelievable isn't it i have to say actually one of the best today was another successful year of making tomato sauce we have four generations of pinellas here working together now this is the best time where we finally get to sit down and enjoy the fresh tomato sauce like nonna taught us to salute i love all you guys thank you thank you and as we say ah\n"