Homemade tomato sauce
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Homemade tomato sauce

A rich and flavourful tomato sauce made from scratch right in your own kitchen! Credits: Shutterstock

A rich and flavourful tomato sauce made from scratch right in your own kitchen! Credits: Shutterstock
You may have seen our recent fact of the day about tomato sauce (or 'ketchup'). At the risk of repeating ourselves, it was originally a concoction with mushrooms as a primary ingredient, rather than tomatoes. As Wikipedia notes, "Ketchup recipes began to appear in British and then American cookbooks in the 18th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ketchup first appeared in 1682. In the United States, mushroom ketchup dates back to at least 1770, and was prepared by British colonists in the Thirteen Colonies."
This recipe (mercifully, we think) doesn't include any mushrooms though.... Rather, it's our take on the tomato sauce we're all used to putting on our chips or sausage sangers.
Here's what you need:
- 500 grams to 1 kilogram of tomatoes (we used ripe roma tomatoes, but you can use the tinned stuff as well)
- 1/2 an onion
- 1 garlic clove
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 1/2 a teaspoon of black pepper
- 100ml of white vinegar
- 1 teaspoon Cinnamon powder
- 1 pinch ground cloves
Instructions:
1. First, finely chop the onion and garlic, and fry gently in the olive oil until softened. Add the tomatoes (chopped or whole, depending on how smooth you want your sauce to be), sugar, salt, pepper, and vinegar, and simmer for around 30 minutes.
2. Add the cinnamon powder and cloves, and simmer for a further 5 minutes. Blitz the sauce with a stick blender (or in a food processor) until it reaches your desired consistency, then taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.
3. Pour into sterilised jars and store in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
There you have it, folks. We can't guarantee it'll be cheaper than the store-bought stuff (in fact, we can almost guarantee it won't be), but we're sure you'll be impressed with the taste.
For those who want an alternative recipe with video instructions, check out the video below:
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