There’s still some summer left, right? It’s not too late to pick up some peak-o’-the-season tomatoes, is it? There’s no time to waste! Let’s make some tomato-butter sauce using fresh tomatoes this time. Then we can freeze it and enjoy it on January pasta or pizza.
As a reminder, check out our original posting of this recipe. That one used canned San Marzano tomatoes. They’re totally fine, but you can’t beat fresh. I will point out again, however, that out-of-season tomatoes are hardly worth bothering with at all. Fresh in the summer, canned the other nine months of the year, I say.
You can make this with any small and red variety of tomatoes available in your area. Early girls, Romas, San Marzano (or other plum tomatoes), Campari, even cherry tomatoes if you’re willing to clean a whole lot. Anything but beefsteak or heirloom will work; use those for sandwiches and salads. Buy as much as you can fit into your nicest pot. A good, enameled Dutch oven will never let you down.
Wash your tomatoes and remove the stems. Scoop out the stem root with a small utility knife (I like the Global); our goal is to use only the fleshy, red parts of the fruit. Next, we’ll peel and seed.
Fill a big bowl with ice and cold water; place it in the sink. In the largest pot you have, boil enough water to cover all the tomatoes. Drop them in carefully and boil for thirty seconds, then drain and move them to the ice bath. This is blanching, and the second part of the process is called shocking. It will make the tomatoes slip out of their skins as easy as, well, make your own analogy. Make sure your sink is clear and you have lots of counter space to set up a production line: you’ll be removing tomatoes from the ice bowl, peeling their skins into your trash bag or garbage disposal, seeding them over a colander placed over another huge bowl, then crushing them into your final cooking pot. This will let you end up with nothing but tomato flesh and gathered juices from the seeding process, both of which make up the sauce.
Seeding is a messy bit of fun. Halve the tomato with your thumbs, then scoop out the seeds and jelly. Seeds contribute nothing but bitterness; flesh is where it’s at. Crush the clean tomato halves into the Dutch oven, getting them down to no bigger than about an inch. Trust me, it’s faster and cleaner than attempting to chop them.
This process might take a while, but it’s not particularly tiring or demanding. Keep paper towels at hand since you’ll be up to your ears in tomatoes, and if your hands itch, that’s tomato juice doing its thing. Wash your hands and continue.
Eventually you’ll arrive at a pot full of crushed tomatoes and a bowl of tomato juice. I wish they sold this juice in bottles, by the way; not pureed tomatoes mixed with water, but the actual juice inside tomatoes. It’s a foggy, pink liquid with a crisp flavor all its own. You’ve been saving it as you seeded so you could add it to the pot, so do that.
Ingredient number two: butter. I recommend buying it the same place you get the tomatoes - your local farmers’ market. How much butter you use is kind of up to you. I go with 1/3 - 1/2 of a stick per tomato, depending on its size. The sauce should be pinkish/orangish, but not so oily that you get pools of butter at the top.
Ingredient the third: one large yellow onion, peeled and cut in half. Place this cut-side-down in the sauce. It’ll contribute sugar, but you won’t keep it in the sauce. When cooking’s done, toss it or eat it as it is. It’ll be sweet and salty and pretty nice, in fact. How about quickly browning it under the broiler and serving it on bread?
That’s all. Start the sauce over medium heat until small bubbles appear on the surface, then go down to low heat and stay there for the next hour or two. You might need to increase and decrease the heat as you go. There should be some movement at the top, but nothing so vigorous that the sauce makes a gurgling sound.
Stir with a wooden spoon every now, and as you do so, break up any large chunks of tomato. This will become easier as fibers break down and the sauce comes together. How long that will take is contingent on many factors: how much you’re making, how juicy your tomatoes were, how well you cleaned them. This can be anything from a very fresh, bright sauce to a fully reduced, roasty-rich flavor bomb. You’ll definitely want to cook off all the water and make the solids and the liquids integrate, but beyond that, it’s your call. If you like a really smooth sauce, take an immersion blender to it right in the pot.
As for salt: add a little bit here and there as you stir. Don’t go overboard right away since the sauce will reduce with time and end up saltier than it starts.
If you’ve made enough to freeze, let it cool down, then portion it into good zip-close bags. Cooks Illustrated recommends thick, freezer-grade, double-groove bags. Those that slide to close are convenient, but they leak.
Eat it in its jammy, true-to-the-tomato form or add herbs, cheese, or whatever you like on your pasta. Just get those tomatoes quickly, while they’re still delicious. This weekend! Go!
