The Best Roasted Tomato Sauce

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, since 2011.

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!

↓ Recipe

• Why You'll Like This Recipe
• Roasted Tomato Sauce Ingredients
• Substitutions and Variations
• Recipe Instructions
• Recipe Tips and Tricks
• Serving and Storing Suggestions
• Recipe FAQs
• More Recipes With Tomatoes
• ⭐️Did You Make This Recipe?
• 📖 Recipe
• 💬 Comments

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.

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

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