Canning Pasta Sauce Using Fresh Garden Vegetables

This is my go to recipe for pasta sauce to use a ton of tomatoes, onions, and herbs from the garden! Let me know if you try it 🙂

Recipe per 32oz of tomato sauce:
– 1 medium red onion or 1/2 red & 1/2 yellow
– 1/2 tsp oregano
– 1 tbsp parsley
– 1 tsp garlic powder
– 1/4 cup basil
– 1 tsp sugar
– pinch of red pepper flakes
– 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

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Tomato food mill: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001TV95D2/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_7HSJ7CJRWAHK0T8QC8SX?linkCode=ml1&tag=morethangarde-20&linkId=51e276413299a983edce0680fd265793
Water bath canner: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B091DBC32X/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_JKZHMTF5K0R0N5BEQ0WD?linkCode=ml1&tag=morethangarde-20&linkId=7c6d46f037c9a767549307e65a80a1d6
Electric water bath canner: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV3CRBCR/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_PCCEK6G47JDT0HNHTTQC?linkCode=ml1&tag=morethangarde-20&linkId=bd5f8849cf13035dfb86b52fa03195a6
Pressure canner: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0000BYCFU/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_18P643C0T4SXXC47DFB4?linkCode=ml1&tag=morethangarde-20&linkId=62f3b35f4e1a8e90f685b27148c210df
Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0136ZFKRS/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_TP782R2ZYVBEXN3ZC6EZ?linkCode=ml1&tag=morethangarde-20&linkId=5e0ad0ab877d4a270dcb7efeec08ad91

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Welcome back to More Than Gardening. I am canning up a ton of pasta sauce today and I’m going to take you with me and show you my recipe and my process. I already have a big stock pot next to me full of fresh tomatoes that have been harvested over the last like week or so. I grabbed them from my tomato racks this morning, which I think you probably would have saw in my last video is just where I keep all my tomatoes once I harvest them. And then if I harvest them before they’re ripe, they just finish ripening there. And I quartered these. I cred them and I think this stockp is this is actually my water bath caner. I think it’s like 21 and 1/2 quarts and it’s almost completely full. So, there’s a ton of tomatoes in here. I also have some tomatoes from the freezer that I’ve been thawing over the last day or so that I’m going to add to this pot. I’m going to show you what those look like cuz this is kind of like a hack if you want to be canning tomato products because you’re growing tomatoes but maybe you don’t have enough fresh tomatoes at one time to fill a pot like this or you’re just getting a few here, a few there and you don’t know what to do. What you can do is just as they’re coming in in smaller batches, you can just cut the tops off or core them, throw them in the freezer, and then the day before you’re going to can, put them out in a bowl. Let me show you what I’ve got. You can put them in a bowl in like on your countertop and let them just like sit throughout the day. And then as they thaw and defrost, I did this yesterday. You can dump out all of the liquid into your sink like this. And this is just all like the tomato water or like the defrosting water that you would end up boiling off in the canning process anyways. That would take hours on your stove top. So, being able to freeze them, thaw them, and then just pour this off. Oops, almost lost one. Um, and then just pour this off just saves hours of boiling time later. So, that’s a little bit of a hack. They look a little crazy right now because as they thaw, I would like press down on them to extract that juice. So, I’ve been like putting a ton of pressure on them and then dumping them out all day yesterday. But, this is actually like this looks like a small bowl. And I’m now I’m looking at my stock pot. I’m like, are these even going to fit? Well, I’m going to push on them so that they do fit cuz I need to fill that entire bowl. But yeah, that is a little bit of a trick. If you don’t have enough fresh tomatoes at once, you can put them in the freezer. And then I’ve also got this morning I went out to the garden and harvested a ton of parsley, which is in here, which we’re going to be using for the sauce today. And then I’ve got a bunch of basil. And I also grabbed probably about like 90% of the oregano that was out there. So, I’m going to be using all these fresh herbs in the sauce today. I’m going to be using red and probably yellow onion, too. Both types of onions that I harvested over the last, I don’t know, a few weeks to a month ago at this point. I can’t even remember when I harvested those. But that will all be going into the sauce, which makes it super super fresh. But if you don’t have fresh herbs from your garden, if you don’t even have, you know, fresh tomatoes to, you know, to use in this, you could even use like canned tomatoes or canned tomato sauce, um, herbs from the store, you know, already dried. The recipe really does work either way, whether it’s like you’re making it fully from your garden or you’re making it from storebought ingredients. So, I’ll leave my entire recipe in the description of this video. I do want to say my recipe is not a fully tested and like vetted recipe by like I guess USDA or ball canning or anyone like that. It’s a recipe I came up with that I based off other tested recipes and then just tweaked to my tasting. I feel perfectly safe with it. I’ve been canning it for a couple years now. That said, with that said, can at your own risk. If you do want to only follow tested recipes, I will leave a link in the description to a canning book full of safe tested recipes if that’s what you’re looking for. But this is what I do and this is what works for me. So, I have my pot of all of my fresh tomatoes and I’m just going to spread them out a little bit to make room because I need to add this entire bowl of my freezer tomatoes to it, which this is a lot. Okay, just very carefully. And I’m going to give it a good push with all of my weight and strength to try to get it to go down. Nice. Okay, just barely fits. And then I’m just going to put this on a medium heat and just let this simmer down until it’s like nice and liquidy. This is how it looks about about an hour and a half later. You can see all the tomatoes are pretty cooked down and it’s just this like liquidy kind of slush. So, I’m going to take this. I’m going to start putting it through my tomato food mill. That way, I can separate out the seeds and the skins from the actual like tomato sauce. Tomato food mill is probably one of my favorite canning gadgets for canning anything with like a tomato sauce base because you can just load up your heated like tomato mixture into this top hopper and then it goes through and the whole machine separates out the juice from the skins and the stems for you. I will leave a link in the description of this video. If you’re looking for something to make canning up like tomato saucebased products easier, I highly recommend this food mill. I just ran all the tomatoes through the food mill and this is how much sauce I have, which is quite a bit because I think this is 21 and a half quarts. So, this is going to make a ton of pasta sauce. And I’m just looking at the thickness of this. It’s really not too thin. However, for a pasta sauce, I want it to be a little bit thicker. So, I’m just going to let it simmer on my stove for a little bit longer just so it can thicken up. The tomato sauce has been going for about an hour and a half and it’s reduced to a pretty good thickness. So, I’m going to go in and add my onion. I did a mix of both red and yellow. And if I had another burner that I could access right now, and if I had a little bit more energy, I would put the onion in like a cast iron with some butter or olive oil just to kind of char a little bit to give it more flavor. But this is going to be just fine adding them raw too because they will cook in the sauce and in the caner. But if you’ve got a little extra time and you want a little bit more flavor, I would recommend doing that. And then I also have some garlic that I’m adding. I’ve got oregano, parsley, and basil from the garden going in. And then a bunch of different seasonings which will all be in everything will be in the description of this video, the whole recipe. And then 3/4 cups of Wesire sauce, which I almost forgot. And then I’m just going to mix everything. And I’m going to let this cook together for about like 15 or 20 minutes. And while this is cooking, I have two water bath canners going, preheating jars. This is actually my pressure caner, but you can use it as a water bath caner. It’s water bath canners are just giant pots with racks on the bottom. So, since this is my actual water bath caner and I’m using it to make the sauce, I’m using the pressure caner as a water bath caner. And then I also have my ball easy caner over here, which I’ll show you guys for another load. That way I can have two full caner loads going. So, those jars are preheating while this is going to all kind of like cook and mix together. It’s been about 15 or 20 minutes and the sauce is a really good thickness and I’ve taste tested it and it tastes really good. So, I’m going to start filling my quart jars. I’m going to take these out one by one. Center it and grab my funnel. And I’m just going to start scooping my sauce into each jar really carefully because it’s really hot. I’m going to fill each of these to a half an inch of head space. and some most like tested recipe books and some people will say you need to add either lemon juice or vinegar to bring up the acidity to water bath can pasta sauce or like tomato sauce based products. I’ve never done that. A lot of like people that have been canning for decades and like Italians and everyone, they don’t do that. Tomatoes are acidic enough in my opinion. So, I’m not going to be adding anything. But if you are worried about it for a quart jar, you can add I think it’s like 2 tablespoon of either vinegar or lemon juice. But I’m just going to fill to a half an inch, which I need just a touch more. Get my headspace tool. And that’s perfect. I’m going to wipe the rim clean. and then add a lid and a band. And the band’s just going to go fingertip tight. And then I’m gonna load this back into my caner. And then I’m just going to repeat that until all of my jars are filled and I don’t have any more sauce left. I have seven full quart jars in this caner and seven full quart jars in this caner. And I just hit go on this one to go for 40 minutes. So, there’s an inch of watering covering all of the jars. And now they’re just going to process at a boil for 40 minutes. Once that time is up, I’m going to cut the heat and let them sit in the caner for 5 minutes while they cool down. And then I’ll remove them from the canners and set them on a towel on my countertop where they’ll then sit for about 12 to 24 hours. This is all 14 quart jars canned. Most of them have already sealed. I’ve been hearing like pops here and there, so I’m really happy about that. I did actually fill one more quart jar, but the caner can only take like each caner can only take seven quarts each. I can only do 14 at a time. So, that 15th one I just put in the refrigerator and we’ll eat it this week with some pasta. So, really happy with how this turned out. It did take me kind of all day. Oh, did you hear that? That pop is one ceiling. So, if you hear that and you’re new to canning, don’t be scared. That’s a really good sign. So, these are just going to sit out overnight. Now, tomorrow morning, I will remove the bands. I’ll check the seals. As long as the lids are pushed down or like concave down and when I hit them, they don’t bounce back at me, then I know they are sealed. I’ll give them a good wash and then I’ll write on the top of them pasta sauce 925 because I made them in September of 2025. Again, I will leave the entire recipe in the description of this video and I’ll also leave links to everything I used to can up the pasta sauce. If you try this recipe, please let me know how you like it. Make sure to follow me on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook. I will leave all those links in the description of this video and I will see you in my next one.