So after a couple of years of not feeling the need, I very urgently needed to make red sauce this year. Like lets wake up at 6am in the morning and go to the farmers market and buy those whole baskets of tomatoes right now kind of need. It turned out being more like 9am, but still…
(WHY is it called “red” sauce, i know, I know it’s red. But there has to be more to it. Just calling it red makes it sound very mid-western I guess.)

So usually I don’t skin the tomatoes, I just mush them up and to hell with all the picky eaters.  And well it sounded like a lot of extra work.
But my dear partner suggested some of it as a gift to family. Not wanting to upset future in-laws I decided, I’ll do a batch of each. Plus the roma’s we got had slightly thick skins. So I filled a pot and set it boiling,  filled the sink with cold water and dropped some in.

And you know what? It was a lot of extra work, but beside burning my fingers a little bit it was morbidly fun.

Here is the collection of my hapless victims and my new collection of skins.

So what did I learn here.

• if they don’t split easily in the boiling water, making a shallow slicedown the side helped a lot.
• putting them in cold water helps a lot, plus reduces the burning.
• And it doesn’t really taste any different. (skin vs. no skin)
• On a wild ambition I tossed a parmesan rind in and yummm. This is my new fav ingredient.

Here is the mostly “skin in” batch before mushing. This is an all day thing, so results later. For now I sit, well- doing this. I will also have to freeze most of it as I still don’t really know how to can.

PS- You need to simmer it reeeealy long to get the extra liquid out, I only did mine about  8 hrs and probably to low a heat. So while it turned out yummy it was very runny. I have the stain on my pants to prove it.  🙁