Roma Tomato Sauce Recipes

There are basically 2 approaches to making tomato sauce that is demonstrated in these videos. One method is to grind skinless tomatoes through a Food Mill (or tomato juicer, or other type processor) until all you have is liquid. A food mill or tomato/vegetable strainer will seperate the seeds, skin and anything leftover from the pure juice. (See this Pragograde Roma Food/Veg Strainer). The juice is then used as the base in the sauce recipies.

The other method is to remove the skin, dice up the tomatoes to any desirable size, and simmer them with the olive oil, garlic, onions, and the other ingredients used in most tomato sauce recipes. The tomatoes will break down along with the other ingredients and liquify and leave in a lot of flavor to enjoy and also offers the option of having some "tomato chunkiness" if so desired, as illustrated in some of the videos below.

THERE ARE NO HARD AND FAST RULES to making your own tomato sauce for pasta and other dishes. One's taste and preferences can be easily improvised into any recipe. Once you finish watching all 6of these videos, you should have a good understanding of how to make tomato sauce, and probably some ideas on how you will make it - your way.

The first video presented is our own Simple Recipe to Make Tomato Sauce. From this method, you can boil it down some more to make ketchup. Or, you can also add garlic, onions, oregano and other seasonings while it's boiling down to give it a great flavor for use as either a pasta or pizza sauce. This method is super simple and comes from my Romanian mother-in-law, where they have been doing it this way for decades. I like this method because it cooks in a lot of the flavor that a food mill or processor wouldn't catch. It's easy to pulverize a tomato down to juice, but this method packs in the natural tomato flavors for a better tasting sauce.

This second video below is explained very well and uses some of my preferred methods. Like ours, his takes awhile to boil down but I think the result is worth the wait.

This next video below was produced by a canned food company showcasing their San Marzano tomatoes. Although not Roma's, the paste style San Marzano is similar and the instructions and methods here can apply to Roma tomatoes as well. A very instructional video once you get past the company self promotion.

In this next video below, this New York City chef shows you an easy way to make tomato sauce, however her method of "removing the seeds" is basically cutting away large chunks of tomato which contain the seeds and using only the non-seed pieces. If you grow your own roma tomatoes for sauce, you may not want to have so much wastage and seek other methods of seperating seed from pulp. Nevertheless, the Chef gives a lot of great advice and tips and her result looks delicious.

Although it doesn't say it in this next video below, the diced tomatoes here have had their skin and seeds removed. This is a simple recipe that doesn't use a food mill to reduce the tomatoes to pure liquid first. Either method, using a food mill or diced tomatoes, works fine. Boiling down diced tomatoes gives one more flavor, IMO.

The only problem I have with this next video, below, is - I am not sure she removed the seeds from the tomatoes. Personally, I don't like tomato seeds in my tomato sauce. However, her method is extremely simple and made me wonder if I couldn't use my blender in place of her "whizzer."

I hope these videos helped. I will post more when I find them. Be sure to visit our sister website, San Marzano Tomatoes to learn more about this famous plum tomato and get more sauce recipes.