Marinara

My notes for marinara are more of a process than a recipe, so I'm formatting this entry a bit differently. Marinara flavoring can really vary depending on personal taste, so feel free to add, delete, modify to your own preferences!



When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When life gives you tomatoes . . . make marinara? Works for me. This is only a small harvesting from what's available in my garden and CSA at the moment so I've got a lot of cooking to do! (p.s. On another note, I have a bag full of lemons from the CSA in my fridge as well, maybe I should explore that homemade lemonade idea???)

1. Because I also had garden-fresh celery, carrots, and onions available, I started my marinara with a traditional mirepoix. I chopped the celery, carrots, and onion into very small pieces, added a head's worth of minced garlic and some olive oil. Put them over heat for 10ish minutes to let them soften and get the juices flowing.

2. I roughly chopped my tomatoes (for this batch, I used about 1 container pictured above). I like my marinara with bigger chunks of tomato, so that's how I cut 'em. You can dice yours finer if you prefer. Once chopped, add tomatoes to the mirepoix.

3. Add canned tomato sauce to achieve your desired thickness/thinness. I added 1 1/2 cans.



4. Add a generous amount of chopped fresh basil and oregano, brown sugar (I used 1Tbs for the whole pot), and salt/pepper. Let the pot simmer for 45-60 minutes. (Careful it is not boiling, just simmering.) As it simmers, taste and adjust herbs/seasonings until it tastes good to you.

5. When done, you can serve or freeze. See directions below for easy freezing.




Have you ever tried getting sauce from a pot into a ziploc? Not pretty. A good friend tipped me off to this easy and CLEAN method for freezing liquid goods. Shechele, if you're out there, thank you. My kitchen is cleaner because of you.

1. Take a ziploc bag and put it inside of a large measuring cup, folding the zipper over the edge. Use a mug to scoop sauce out of pot and into the bag.

2. Once full, zip most of the way closed, squeeze out excess air and lay flat on a cookie sheet. Put in freezer until solid. This makes the sauce super thin and stackable, great for long-term storage in an overcrowded freezer!