Make it and freeze it, or can it for later, this homemade roasted garlic pasta sauce has all the best flavors of summer tomatoes, with red wine and balsamic!

The summer season is at an end, and fall is here! I couldn’t be more excited! Fall is my favorite season, and it’s time to clean out the garden of all the remaining tomatoes and make sauce! At this point I have over a dozen jars canned and ready to go. It’s mildly obscene. But it makes me so giddily happy.

I even made cute canning labels using free resources online. You can find my step by step tutorial on my YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe for all of my latest recipe videos and future how-to’s. If you would rather, I also have an extensive How-To section on the blog here and my goal is to put up the step by step tutorial on the labels as a blog post, too.

I should mention that there is one head of roasted garlic in each pint. We don’t mess around here, son.

I don’t know about you, but my tomatoes took forever this year and came on late, and sporadically. I didn’t want to waste any of them, so I tried out a trick of freezing my tomatoes until I had enough ripe ones to get one full recipe of this homemade roasted garlic pasta sauce. And when it takes 12 pounds of tomatoes, it takes a little while to accumulate that many. The bonus of freezing them, makes them FAR easier to peel when making sauce!

And since I had 10 basil plants that needed to get used up, and I filled the freezer with my own homemade frozen pesto cubes, it was time to put them to use in this homemade roasted garlic pasta sauce. I love this sauce with the addition of brown sugar and balsamic vinegar to give it a hint of sweet, and red wine to give it that added depth. 6 heads of roasted garlic never hurt anyone either!

Making your own sauce is so gratifying, and if you’re new to canning, this is a intermediate one to go with, or you can freeze it in portioned out freezer quart bags. I would recommend only filling the quart bags with 2-3 cups, laying them flat to freeze, and they will be much easier to store upright next to one another, saving space.

And don’t forget to make your own custom canning labels using free resources online. My handwriting is not that cute so labels are the way to go for me!

If you need additional inspiration for all your summer tomatoes, try this roasted tomato brie dip, or smoky roasted salsa!

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Homemade Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce

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  • Author: Megan
  • Prep Time: 3 Hours 10 MInutes
  • Cook Time: 1 Hour 30 Minutes
  • Total Time: 4 hours 40 minutes
  • Yield: 6 PInts 1x
  • Category: Canning
  • Method: Stove Top
  • Cuisine: Italian

Description

Make it and freeze it, or can it for later, this homemade roasted garlic pasta sauce has all the best flavors of summer tomatoes, with red wine and balsamic!


Ingredients

Scale
  • 6 Whole Bulbs Garlic, roasted
  • 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
  • 3 Red Sweet Bell Peppers, sliced in half and seeded
  • 12 Pounds Ripe Tomatoes, Peeled
  • 3 Tbsp Brown Sugar
  • 2 Tbsp Kosher Salt (or 4 teaspoons regular salt)
  • 3 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar
  • 1/2 cup Red Wine (just use a basic cooking wine, don’t use anything expensive.)
  • 1 tsp Ground Black Pepper
  • 2 cups Fresh Basil Leaves, minced
  • 1 cup Other Herbs – Such as Oregano, Thyme, Parsley, or more Basil), minced
  • 6 Tbsp BOTTLED Lemon Juice (for safety in canning)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut the top 1/2″ of the heads of each garlic bulb, exposing the cloves of garlic. Remove any excess paper layers from the outside. Place the garlic bulbs in a roasting pan, and drizzle with half of the olive oil. Cover it with foil, and place in the oven. With the bell pepper, place them cut side down on a baking sheet, and drizzle with other half of the oil. Place in the oven along side the garlic. Roast for about 40 minutes, until the garlic feels soft and the peppers are slightly charred. (Likewise, if you would like, you can grill the peppers to get extra char and speed things up.)

Allow the peppers and the garlic to cool before handling. Remove the skins from the peppers and discard, and remove the cloves of garlic from the bulbs.

Place the garlic cloves and peppers into a large food processor, along with some of the peeled tomatoes, and process until the tomatoes are chunky. Pour the mixture into a 7-8 quart stainless steel, or enameled heavy pot. Repeat processing the tomatoes in the food processor, and add them to the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, adding in the remaining brown sugar, kosher salt, balsamic vinegar, red wine, and pepper. Boil the mixture for 70-90 minutes, stirring frequently, or until it reaches the desired consistency you like in a sauce.

Remove the pot from the heat, and stir in the fresh basil and other herbs.

This sauce can be frozen in individual quart freezer safe bags, or canned for long term storage.

To Can –

Clean and sterilize 6-7 pint jars, and heat them through. Pour 1 Tablespoon of bottled lemon juice into each hot jar. Ladle the sauce into each jar, leaving 1/2″ of headspace in the jars. Wipe rims and place lids and screw bands on top. Tighten to finger tight. Process in a boiling water bath for 35 minutes – start timing when the water comes back to boiling. Remove jars and cool completely on wire rack.

USE MY TUTORIAL ON MAKING YOUR OWN CANNING LABELS FOR CUTE CANNED GOODS!