The Yellow Tomato Sauce Experiment

Yesterday, after coming home with more yellow Sunbursts than I knew what to do with, I decided to conduct a little crock pot experiment today. I figured I had nothing to really lose in the deal, so why not?

Before I left for work, I crammed all of the small tomatoes into a sink full of soapy water. I swished and rinsed them, drained them on paper towels, and settled on making tomato sauce from scratch.

I use a ton of tomato sauce in my batch cooking recipes for chili, spaghetti sauce, soups, stews and rice dishes. Canned tomatoes are okay, but I do worry about BPA linings, and carton tomato sauces are bionic in price. Perhaps my sister wife, April and her food storage system is on to something. Making my own is my preferred method in the kitchen anyway, so why not concoct some yellow tomato sauce with my plethora of free tomatoes?

In the past, I have made tomato sauce by blanching the fruit, removing the skin and pureeing the tomatoes. Obviously, with the tiny size of these yellow sunbursts, there was no way in hell I was going to peel them. Here is what I did instead:

I just threw in a few frozen garlic cubes, a few basil cubes, tossed in the clean tomatoes, drizzled a bit of olive oil,
shook the dried Italian herbs on the top, closed the lid and left the crock pot on low. Before I walked out the door for work, about an hour or so later, the contentslooked like this and seemed to be slowly oozing tomato juice. When I got home the tomatoes had cooked down and were swimming in bubbling liquid. The house smelled like a pizza factory and my project passed the sniff test.

In order to take the tomatoes to sauce status,

I blended them using my immersion blender stick. After whirling through the skins, pulp, herbs and fruit, the sauce was nice and smooth. I allowed it to cook even longer on low to thicken it a bit. The color went from golden yellow to a deep amber as it stewed.

I tasted the tomato sauce after it cooled. I'm pleased to report that it was beyond decent. Despite the funky color,it tasted fine. It tastes like the red version but appears to be more brownish yellow- I highly doubt it was cause alarm in cooked food. I am sure it will be great in meatloaf, sauces, and soups.

I am storing the crock pot sauce in ziploc freezer quarts, and the remaining 3 cups are spread out into ice cube trays in the freezer. Once they are frozen solid, I will plop them into another ziploc and use them accordingly.

The great yellow tomato sauce experiment is deemed a success.