I got this from one of my favorite gardening websites, as a way to use up tons of homegrown tomatoes. I freeze the sauce and use it all year. This makes about 3 cups. After having made it many times I've created a short abbreviated recipe immediately below. Below that is the original recipe from that website followed by explanations for the changes I made.
MY VERSION OF THE RECIPE
Ingredients
4 lbs tomatoes, stemmed and quartered
1 large or 2-3 small red onions (preferably, but yellow or white will work), roughly chopped
1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, split in two and seeded.
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Directions
1) Preheat oven to 450°.Combine ingredients in a large roasting pan, preferably large enough so tomatoes lie in a single layer (I use my turkey roaster). Roast for 1-1/2 to 2 hours until tomatoes are moderately blackened. Don't underbake, that makes the sauce watery.
2) Let cool a little before pureeing, Puree through a food mill to remove the skin and seeds. (Note: you MUST use a food mill to separate the skin and seeds from the pulp. Do NOT try to puree the mix using a blender or food processor; if you attempt to do so, the blackened skin will be pureed into the sauce and the result will be bad.)
3) Bag and freeze. When using, first sautee a couple cloves of minced or pressed garlic in a little olive oil. Stir in the sauce and simmer for a few minutes. Add salt to taste. Add chopped fresh basil if desired. Or, you could add dried oregano when you add the sauce to the pan, in which case simmer it for a little longer.
ORIGINAL RECIPE
Below is the original recipe, followed by some notes explaining the changes I've made.
Ingredients
4 lbs tomatoes, stemmed and quartered
1 large or 2-3 small red onions (or yellow or white), roughly chopped
1 or 2 jalapeno peppers, split in two and seeded.
16 cloves garlic (about two heads) Optional - see my note 1 below
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tbls dry oregano (or a bunch of fresh oregano and basil) See my note 2 below
Directions
1) Preheat oven to 450°.Combine ingredients in a large roasting pan, preferably large enough so tomatoes lie in a single layer. Roast for 1-1/2 to 2 hours until tomatoes are a bit blackened.
2) Let cool and puree through a food mill to remove the skin and seeds.(Note: you MUST use a food mill to separate the skin and seeds from the pulp. Do NOT try to puree the mix using a blender or food processor; if you attempt to do so, the blackened skin will be pureed into the sauce and the result will be bad.)
3) Season to taste with salt and pepper. Can or freeze as desired.
NOTES:
This is a really terrific recipe. Here are some comments:
1) Regarding the garlic: this original recipe calls for roasting the garlic along with the other ingredients. The flavor of roasted garlic is very different from normal garlic, so I omit the garlic and instead when I USE the sauce I first sautee four or five minced (or pressed) cloves of garlic in olive oil.
2) I also don't add the herbs (oregano or basil) before roasting, instead I add them when I use the sauce. Roasting the herbs at that high of a temp for that long is weird. Basil in particular can't be treated that way, at most it should be simmered in a sauce for a short period of time. I most often using basil raw without cooking it at all, stirring it into the final sauce or often just sprinkling chopped basil over the food.
3) The recipe says to roast for 1-1/2 to 2 hours. The general idea is to roast until the tomato skins have large patches of black. For me, around 1 hr 40 min usually works but it depends on how ripe the tomatoes are.
4) This recipe uses a "food mill" which not everyone has (for some reason many people seem to think food mills are only used for making baby food, which is pretty weird). It works great for separating the blackened skin and seeds from the pulp, I don't know any way around it.
5) Most tomato sauce recipes recommend using roma tomatoes (plum tomatoes). It's never seemed to matter, much of the liquid evaporates while the tomatoes roast so the sauce ends up being pretty thick and rich even with regular "globe" style tomatoes. What really matters is using good ripe tomatoes.
6) The original recipe calls for two jalapenos. I use one, sometimes one and a half depending on size and where they come from. I like spicy food but it's not appropriate for every application, an Italian tomato sauce that is really hot and spicy is a lttle weird.
7) This recipe varies from batch to batch, sometimes coming out quite sweet.
8) This makes pretty much exactly three cups of fairly thick and flavorful sauce, it should be used somewhat sparingly.