As farmers' markets overflow with fresh, ripe summer tomatoes, now is the perfect time to make a batch of roasted tomato sauce. Skip the stockpot and reach for your roasting pan to create a richly concentrated and flavorful sauce that captures the essence of summer. While 'the best' is a bold statement, this recipe has been shared more than 50,000 times through the years. It's a reader favorite for good reason.
In late summer when prices are low, I'll bring home 10-20 pounds of fresh tomatoes and make my own roasted tomato sauce. Roasting tomatoes concentrates their natural sweetness. Adding garlic, onions, and herbs adds wonderful flavor. Store-bought pasta sauce can't hold a candle to this!
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Why You'll Like This Recipe
- Roasted tomato sauce freezes well for a quick meal in colder months to come.
- Takes advantage of fresh summer tomatoes.
- Terrific with many dishes like this easy chicken parmesan, and of course simply with a bowl of pasta.
If you love homemade tomato sauce, here's another recipe, my easy homemade marinara sauce. Make it in about 30 minutes with canned tomatoes.
Roasted Tomato Sauce Ingredients
- Tomatoes: Use meaty, fresh ripe tomatoes, whatever looks best and is a good price as you need a lot of tomatoes. Check out your local farmer's markets. Different types of tomatoes is good
- Garlic: Use fresh garlic cloves, not garlic powder, for that punch of flavor. A must for tomato sauce.
- Oil: Extra virgin olive oil is the best.
- Wine: A little dry red wine adds nice flavor but it's optional.
- Herbs: Fresh oregano, fresh basil leaves, or some of each.
- Onions: Yellow, brown, or white, all are fine.
- Red pepper flakes: If you want to add a little spiciness.
Please see the recipe card for measurements, salt and black pepper.
Here's another of my favorite tomato-based sauces; mushroom marinara. Rich and meaty but no meat!
Chef Sally's tip on wine: When I cook with wine I use the mini airline size bottles so I don't have to open a big bottle. They work great, are inexpensive, and easy to keep in the pantry. Wine enhances flavor in cooking, but of course using it is optional.
Substitutions and Variations
- To offset the acidity of the tomatoes, some people add a little sugar. If your tomatoes are sweet, you probably won't need it, but you can use it if perferred. Another option is a little monk fruit.
- Another nice addition is a tablespoon or two of balsamic vinegar. Add this when pureeing the roasted tomato sauce. It adds nicely to the flavor of the sauce.
- To use dried herbs instead of fresh herbs, use a dried Italian seasoning blend. Use ⅓ to ½ as much as fresh herbs.
Chef's tips on tomatoes: So what's a good tomato for this sauce? I usually buy a combination of heirloom varieties like Brandywine and Purple Cherokee (a purple beefsteak) and Roma tomatoes, for fun color and flavor mixed in. Red beefsteak tomatoes are excellet too. Buy what looks best and is a good price as this is a lot of tomatoes! A mix is great for roasted pasta sauce. For more info on varieties of tomatoes read this.
Recipe Instructions
- Step 1: Pre-heat a hot oven or two ovens to 425°F.
- Step 2: Wash the tomatoes and core them, depending on variety. Beefsteak and heirloom tomatoes have bigger cores. If you are using Romas, you may only need to chop them. Chop the tomatoes into larger chunks. Add them to the roasting pans.
- Step 3: Roughly chop onions and peel garlic cloves leaving them whole. Add them to the roasting pans, diving the quantity between the two.
- Step 4: Add olive oil, chopped herbs, wine (if using), salt and pepper and toss with your hands to mix.
- Step 5: Roast the tomatoes. Timing is approximately 1:15 minutes, depending on how juicy the tomatoes are, how concentrated you want your roasted tomato sauce, and your ovens. It might take a little longer.
- Stir the sauce half way through. Check their progress around 45 minutes. Don't leave the ovens open too long. Roast until the tomatoes and onions are a nicely shriveled with browned edges and there is still a little juice in the pan bottom.
- Step 6: When roasting is complete, allow pans to cool long enough to handle, then spoon everything carefully into a food processor or blender in batches and puree. For a chunky sauce, do a few pulses. For a smooth sauce, process for a little longer. Your preference.
Another tool option, use a stick blender (immersion blender). They are a handy tool that takes up a lot less kitchen space than a food processor or high powered blender for smaller kitchens. Be sure to puree in a tall pot in the kitchen sink to reduce splatter (and wear an apron!).
Chef's tip on yield: My most recent batch of roasted tomato sauce yielded 3 beautiful quarts. At other times, the yield has been 2 quarts. Maybe the tomatoes were more or less juicy, or maybe I reduced it farther in roasting. Either way, the sauce is fantastic and thick after pureeing.
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Recipe Tips and Tricks
Use one large roasting pan (like you use for a turkey) for a half batch or two large roasting pans for a full batch. For a full batch with one roasting pan, split this recipe into two batches. If you have double ovens or one really large oven, you might be able to do two pans at once with two roasting pans. If you only have one roasting pan, try borrowing a second from a friend.
Another option is using a big electric roaster like you might do a turkey in. Electric roasters are great tools and I've used them for other recipes but not for roasted tomato sauce. You'll have to experiment with timing.
Don't use disposable, uncoated aluminum pans. The acidity in tomatoes reacts with the aluminum with the possibility of leaving an unpleasant metallic taste.
While the long terms effects of aluminum leaching into foods it not fully known (there are conflicting reports), acidic foods like tomatoes are better off in stainless steel or anodized aluminum. Anodized aluminum roasting pans work because the manufacturing process hardens the metal making it non-reactive.
Read Tip: Willie says "I've been making this for a few years now - the best marinara sauce EVER! ? I use two stainless steel cookie sheets (don't have 2 roasting pans) and switch top and bottom, half way thru cooking". See here entire comment below.
Serving and Storing Suggestions
- Serve over your favorite pasta noodle. It's a good basic spaghetti sauce, or for penne or rotini (corkscrew).
- For a lower carb dinner, serve over zucchini noodles.
- It makes a terrific pizza sauce!
- Roasted tomato sauce is also terrific with my ricotta and kale stuffed shells recipe.
- Serve as a dipping sauce with a grilled cheese sandwich. Oh, it's so good.
How Do I Store Roasted Tomato Sauce?
Roasted tomato sauce will keep in the refrigerator for 5 days in an airtight container, or freezer for up to 6 months. I've used glass jars (like a mason jar or a ball jar) and these portioned silicone freezing cubes.
Store roasted tomato sauce in them or when the sauce is frozen solid, pop the cubes out and store in freezer-safe zip bags, labeled and dated.
When you fill jars, don't fill them all of the way to the top. Leave a little head space for expansion.
To thaw frozen sauce, place in the refrigerator overnight, pour into a pan over medium heat with a lid on low heat. On of my favorite things to label jars with is these removable labels. They work great.
Roasted Tomato Sauce Canning Notes
I used to can this sauce with a pressure canner so it was pantry stable. Now I just freeze the finished sauce.
Low-acid foods such as tomato sauce should optimally be processed using a pressure canner, not a water bath. Only a pressure canner can reach the 240 degrees necessary to safely process low-acid foods (a ph value greater than 4.6).
For instructions on preparing canned tomatoes, check out this article from Simply Canning.
Recipe FAQs
Meatier tomatoes are best for making a roasted tomato sauce. Buy either Roma tomatoes or plum tomatoes, but you can use any variety of tomatoes depending on availability and personal preference. I often use heirloom tomatoes.
If the tomatoes have lots of seeds, squeeze or slice some of them out after halving or quartering. A combination of tomatoes make for good flavor. If you want a really red sauce, use all red tomatoes, or mix in colors for fun and flavor.
No need to peel tomatoes before roasting as the skins soften during roasting and add nice texture to the finished sauce. Plus, there is good nutrition in those skins, so I recommend not peeling. It's definitely a time saver too. For a smoother roasted tomato sauce, puree longer in a food processor or blender.
Traditional herbs for roasted tomato sauce include basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, Italian parsley, and bay leaf. Soft leaf herbs blend into the finished sauce easily when pureeing. Herbs such as bay leaf must be removed, as you do not want to eat them. Rosemary, if chopped, will blend in, or use sprigs then remove after roasting.
More Recipes With Tomatoes
Here are more recipe for you using tomatoes, from oven roasted cherry tomatoes to an easy marinara, bolognese, and mushroom sauce.
⭐️Did You Make This Recipe?
If you make this roasted tomato sauce recipe, please comment and let me know, and if you loved it, please give it a 5 star rating! They really help other readers.
Recipe originally published in September 19, 2011.
📖 Recipe
Roasted Tomato Sauce
Equipment
- Stainless steel roasting pans
- Food processor or blender
- Double ovens or split the batch into two
Ingredients
- 10 pounds fresh tomatoes
- 16 large whole garlic cloves, peeled
- ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
- ½ cup dry red wine optional
- 6 tablespoons fresh oregano leaves or basil leaves (or both) or 2 tablespoons dried
- 2 medium onions roughly chopped
- 1-2 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar optional
- 2 teaspoons sea salt
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- ¼-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes optional
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Instructions
Pre-heat Ovens
- Pre-heat the oven (s) to 425°F. Get out two large stainless steel roasting pans (like for roasting a turkey).
Prep Tomatoes
- Wash the tomatoes. Depending on the type of tomato, you may need to cut out the core first, as with large Beefsteak or Heirloom varieties. You may not need to with Roma or plum tomatoes Cut tomatoes into large chunks. Don’t cut the pieces too small. Big chunks are good. Smaller pieces roast too fast.
Roast Tomatoes
- Place tomatoes in the roasting pan. Add garlic cloves, oil, wine or broth, oregano, onion, salt and pepper. Toss with your hands. Place pans in the oven and roast until tomatoes have reduced and are starting to get a few black edges. The pan should still have some juices, not be dry. Depending on your oven it should take about 60 minutes. Stir half way through. If the tomatoes are really juicy, it may take longer.
Cool and Puree
- Remove pans from oven, set on the stove top and allow to cool until you can handle it. Carefully transfer the roast tomatoes into a food processor and pulse 5-6 times or until you get the preferred texture. You can also use a blender and process in batches. Serve or cool completely and freeze in portions.
Sandy McClaskey says
I made this for the first time last year and loved it. Went to look it up on Pinterest my saved recipes and it was gone😱. I remember the original recipe photo and the different tomatoes, when I searched none had the photo. I ended up reading all of them with the same name, the 3td one was yours💃. It's in the oven as I write this. Just as an FYI, someone asked about using an electric roaster, my daughter used one when we got together and made this last year, massive amounts in her double oven and the electric roaster which worked just fine. Have one bag left from last year in the freezer, this years tomatoes came on just in time! Thanks for sharing this amazing recipe!
Sally Cameron says
Hey Sandy! Thanks so much for commenting and for explaining what you do, that's great. The electric roaster idea is terrific. Im so happy you love it! We do too. BTW, I've updated the recipe name to Roasted Tomato Sauce which is more what people are looking for, but the recipe is the same.
Ali Wilson says
I found this recipe 2 yrs ago (I think) and my family loves it! Over the years I have fine tuned it to our taste buds. I add basil and halve the oregano, double the fresh cracked pepper & I use a dry white wine as I never have red in my house. I grow my tomatoes and this year specifically planted San Marzano's along with Amish paste just for this recipe. So far we have been extremely happy with the taste. Cooking my third batch tonight. Thank you for sharing which cookware to use. Someone else mentioned that, it's so helpful. Having the right cookware and using the right cookware are very different 🤔
Sally Cameron says
Thanks for commenting Ali. So glad this has worked for you and how you've tuned it up for your family. I use whatever wine I have too, but here's a good little trick. If you ever want to use red wine to cook with, just get a little 4-pack of airline size bottles for such use. They work great and it's usually what I use for cooking. I just had a raised bed garden built and am looking forward to hone grown tomatoes next season. And I'm glad the tops help on cookware and tools too! Happy cooking.
Jennifer says
I love this recipe. I was a bit short on tomatoes last fall after I picked the last ones before the snow fell, but had some eggplant from my garden too. Tossed that in to make up the difference, and it was amazing. Froze it instead of canning. Was just as good later.
Sally Cameron says
What a great add! Thanks for commenting Jennifer. Bet it is delicious. I am waiting for summer tomatoes to make more.
Kristin says
What do you this for? Ad a spaghetti sauce?
Sally Cameron says
Hi Kristin. I'm not sure I understand your question. If you mean do I use it as a spaghetti sauce, then the answer is yes. I use it over spaghetti, penne and others kinds of noodles, and with zucchini noodles for a low carb noodle. You can also use it for a baked egg dish like Shakshuka. Good to bake shrimp in too then pour it all over the noodles. Hope that helps. If not, please let me know.
Erin says
Hi Sally,
I had your recipe pinned for a long time and this year we have a bumper crop of tomatoes I put all the ingredients on a cookie sheet; roasted everything in the grill. What a wonderful taste!! My husband is going to love it. I then place it all in my big pot to blend with a hand stick blender. This is my first-time to make marinara. I will be pressure canning this wonderful, flavorful recipe. Thank you so much for sharing. This is a keeper!!
Sally Cameron says
Love to hear that Erin and what a great idea on grilling! Thanks for your comment so others can try it too!
Lacey says
When you blend the tomatoes, do you add everything from the roasting pan including the garlic or do you just pick out the tomatoes?
Sally Cameron says
Hi Lacey, blend it all, everything from the pan. Garlic gets sweet when it roasts and it gives this sauce great flavor.
Cara Hagar says
Hi Sally. I've made this recipe a couple of times this summer and love love love it. The do it a bit differently. I don't like tomato skins, so I clean slice and weigh the tomatoes first, and then I broil them for 3-4 minutes. The skins wrinkle up and are easily removed. Then, because I use a combination of roma type (Amish Paste) and heirloom (Brandywine & Big Beef) tomatoes, mine tends to be very juicy. So juicy that they would take forever to cook down. So I pour whatever juice has collected in the pan after broiling but before I start roasting (obviously before I put the other ingredients in) and I reduce that in a saucepan. I add the garlic, etc and roast the tomatoes, adding the reduced sauce to the finished tomatoes. Absolutely divine. By removing the skins I also don't have to put mine in a blender. I can do that later if I wish, depending on the recipe, or I can add some fresh basil and put this very rustic/chunky sauce on toasted french bread. Out of this world good!! Thanks so much for posting this recipe - it's the best one I've found.
Sally Cameron says
That's great Cara! I love to hear what people do to make recipes work for them, and it sounds delicious. Thanks much for explaining what you do for the benefit of others readers!
Kathy L says
Why could you not use a water bath? Have made sauce in this manner for years without any problems.
Sally Cameron says
Hi Kathy. There is debate over canning tomato products because tomatoes are low acid. Most sites I've read say to pressure can tomatoes for food safety reasons. The high heat of a pressure canner wards off any potential contaminants. Some say you can do it safely the old fashioned method by adding bottled lemon juice or powdered citric acid. pH test strips can be used to determine acidity. There is a good post here from the Ball canning site on the water bath method http://www.freshpreserving.com/basil-garlic-tomato-sauce-%7C-recipes-for-tomato-sauce-%7C-ball-preserving-br1045.html#q=tomato%2Bsauce&start=6
rMary Lynn says
Hi there! Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe!! I made a giant batch today with tomatoes and herbs from our garden and it turned out beautifully! Delicious and full of flavor. For those asking about pressure canning, I have a Presto weighted pressure canner and I canned 5 qts for 25 min with 10 lbs pressure. You would do pints for 20 min with this particular type of PC. Thanks again for such a flavorful recipe!
Sally Cameron says
Thanks for your notes Mary! I'm sure it will help other readers! And how lovely to have a garden with homegrown tomatoes.
Anna says
Hello and thank you for this recipe. Is it possible to use an electric roaster as opposed to the oven? Or does it have a deeper flavor when using the oven? Thank you
Sally Cameron says
Hi Anna. As I do not have an electric roaster, I have not tried that but think it would work fine, if its a big one with enough space. The reason I use the big roasting pans in the oven is they provide enough surface space (and are shallow) for the tomatoes to roast off the moisture and concentrate flavors. I am sure with er way it will be delicious. Please report back if you try it.
Tricia says
I made a double batch of this in the fall and froze it when the tomatoes at the farmers market were plentiful. I was digging through the freezer this weekend looking for more and realized that I only had 1 small container left!
I had also frozen a bunch of plain tomatoes so today I made another batch! LOVE this simple but delicious recipe! Thanks so much
Sally Cameron says
Yeah! Love to hear that it works for you. Thanks for commenting back and letting me know Tricia. Makes me smile!
Willie says
I've been making this for a few years now - the best marinara sauce EVER! Why would anyone in their right mind peel tomatoes if they don't have to?! Or stand at the stove stirring something almost guaranteed to stick? I'm just crazy busy and this recipe really suits my style - carefree and fabulous! I use two stainless steel cookie sheets (don't have 2 roasting pans) and switch top and bottom, half way thru cooking. They are piled over the lip of the cookie sheets when they go in, but cook down. When they are done and cooled a little, I throw them in my blender (easier clean up than the processor - do you see the pattern here... ) and blend just a couple pulses in small batches. Then I can them up and enjoy them all winter. Romas have worked the best for me.
Sally Cameron says
Thanks for sharing what you do Willie! Love that you use cookie (rimmed baking) sheets. Great tip for others who may not have two roasters. And yes on the blender versus a food processor. If I can't get heirlooms, Romas work great, you are right.