Homemade Tomato Hot Sauce - Don't Let Extra Tomatoes Go To Waste!

It's almost garden fresh tomato season!  Nothing tastes better than a tomato that is truly vine-ripened. Although tomatoes are available year-round, vine-ripened tomatoes are only available during the growing season.  Vine-ripened tomatoes are difficult to pick, pack, and ship, so they are not found at your local grocery store (those are picked green and "ripened" enroute).  To get that amazing flavor you either need to grow them yourself or buy them straight from a farm or at the local farmer's market.  BTW, tomatoes are really good for you.  They are packed with vitamin C, potassium, fiber, vitamin A (health-promoting beta-carotene), and they are a great source of lycopene, which may play a role in fighting cancer.

The fruit has "set" on our tomato plants, and our first tomato will be ripe sometime in the next few days.  It will be followed closely by scores of other ones and the day is coming soon when we will have more tomatoes that we can eat.

What do you do with extra tomatoes?  

There are so many options!  Home gardeners have an old saying, "Eat what you can, and can what you can't".  You can capture and keep much of that flavor and nutrition of vine-ripened tomatoes by making them into delicious complementary foods to eat right away or preserve through canning.  For example you can make pasta sauce, homemade ketchup, wonderful soups, or--if you're really smart and brave--hot sauce!

About Hot Sauce...

Hot sauce is any condiment made of chili peppers and other ingredients.  There are many recipes for hot sauces but the only common ingredient is any kind of chili pepper. Many hot sauces are made by using chili peppers as the base and can be as simple as adding salt and vinegar while other sauces use some type of fruits or vegetables as the base and add the chili peppers to make them hot. You can use many different processes including aging in containers, pureeing and cooking the ingredients to achieve a desired flavor.  I've been making my own hot sauces for years.  They're far more economical and in my opinion they taste better than the commercial varieties.

Linda and I recently joined two other couples to cook for our church's Girls Camp.  The camp was primitive (i.e. no electricity or cooking facilities) so we got to rough-it and bring in a lot of grills, camp stoves, ice chests etc.  Inevitably we had a lot of leftovers which included diced tomatoes, chopped green onions etc.  Our fridge is bulging with perishable leftovers that we're trying hard to eat up before they go bad.  In that spirit I decided to make a batch of medium hot sauce.  This is adapted from a wonderful recipe created by our son and his wife for a mild tomato-based sauce that is so good you could eat it with a spoon straight from the jar.  I ended up with four quarts of sauce, but it's not too much because this is mild enough that it can be applied to food by the spoonful rather than by the drop, but it's got a rich combination of flavors that blooms in an intriguing mouth-watering essence.

How to make your own homemade Tomato Hot Sauce:

• 9 cups Fresh Tomatoes - diced
• 3 Tbsp Olive Oil
• 3 Onions - chopped
• 2 cups Green Onions - chopped
• 1/4 cup Garlic - minced
• 1 cup Pickled Jalapeño Peppers (you can use less if you want the sauce to be milder)
• 1 bunch Cilantro - chopped
• 2 Tbsp Salt
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• 3 cups White Vinegar

Cook onions and garlic in oil and salt until onions are caramelized. Add the remaining ingredients and cook until tomatoes break down.  Blend until smooth.  Pour into sterilized canning jars while still hot and seal tightly with a lid and ring.  Serve with chips for dipping or spoon onto Grandma's Haynie's Famous Sunday Tacos.