Skyline 3-Way

[Plu]

So you say using whole tomatoes and then cooking that until it becomes sauce? How long would that proces take?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

So you say using whole tomatoes and then cooking that until it becomes sauce? How long would that proces take?

Remove skin and membranes *seeds* which leaves the pulp which cooks down fairly quick.. Don't use store bought oak barrel hard as r?ck completely flavorless tomatoes if at all possible. :)

[Mermaid]

Can you share the trick of turning fresh tomatoes into sauce? I've not really figured it out yet, so I usually fall back on premade sauced tomatoes.

Don't listen to mermaid.  :-D

Put a small quantity of oil, preferably olive oil, in a pot. First fry some onions, then add garlic. Make sure none of it  turns black. Stir frequently. Cut tomatoes, either sliced or cubed. Then add that to pot. The real trick is to observe what's happening in the pot -- you are eliminating moisture. MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Your tomatoes are fully cooked when that moisture has been mostly eliminated - it should look like a thick paste. You can then add your favorite spices. Also, you can add taste to your sauce by adding a piece of boned meat -- my favorite is pork ribs, meatballs are ok. Let it simmer for about fifteen minutes. And voilà.

Well I never.

Is it the sugar that's sacrilege? I have heard that before. What do I know? I am a pasty Irish girl from a long line of frighteningly bad cooks.

[josephpalazzo]

So you say using whole tomatoes and then cooking that until it becomes sauce? How long would that proces take?

Depends on how many tomatoes you use and what kind of tomatoes. Some tomatoes have more moisture than others, so it will take longer. The important thing is to do it and gain some experience. Start out small, like use 4 or 5 tomatoes, again this depends on the size of tomatoes. If you see this is not enough for what you had mind then the next time, you can use more tomatoes. In general, it should take around 15 minutes to cook the tomatoes into a thick sauce, and another 15 minutes of simmering with the meat. But this is just an approximation. Real chefs don't use measuring cups or timer.  :P At the beginning, you will need to stand right in front of the pot, and with frequent stirring and looking at the texture, you'll get a sense when the tomatoes are really cooked. .

[josephpalazzo]

Can you share the trick of turning fresh tomatoes into sauce? I've not really figured it out yet, so I usually fall back on premade sauced tomatoes.

Don't listen to mermaid.  :-D

Put a small quantity of oil, preferably olive oil, in a pot. First fry some onions, then add garlic. Make sure none of it  turns black. Stir frequently. Cut tomatoes, either sliced or cubed. Then add that to pot. The real trick is to observe what's happening in the pot -- you are eliminating moisture. MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Your tomatoes are fully cooked when that moisture has been mostly eliminated - it should look like a thick paste. You can then add your favorite spices. Also, you can add taste to your sauce by adding a piece of boned meat -- my favorite is pork ribs, meatballs are ok. Let it simmer for about fifteen minutes. And voilà.

Well I never.

Is it the sugar that's sacrilege? I have heard that before. What do I know? I am a pasty Irish girl from a long line of frighteningly bad cooks.

The sugar comes in if you don't use fresh tomatoes, and you are using canned ones. In that case, you need to taste the sauce once it's done, and sometimes, it will have a little of that acidity taste -- in cans, the tomatoes can absorb from the wall of the container. So if that is the case -- it tastes ascetic -- then what I do is to add a little of sugar to take away the acidity taste, but with fresh tomatoes, I never do that. With some canned tomatoes, there is already some added sugar, one more reason why I stay away from canned stuff as much as possible.

[Hydra009]

So if that is the case -- it tastes ascetic -- then what I do is to add a little of sugar to take away the acidity taste, but with fresh tomatoes, I never do that.

???

[josephpalazzo]

So if that is the case -- it tastes [s:3pk13dgo]ascetic[/s:3pk13dgo] acidic -- then what I do is to add a little of sugar to take away the acidity taste, but with fresh tomatoes, I never do that.

???

[ Image ]

Glad some people are paying attention,  :roll:

[Mermaid]

I guess this is where we part ways.  :)

I do taste it and I do use fresh tomatoes. I find that adding sugar to taste balances the flavor.

[josephpalazzo]

Blasphemy  :P

[ApostateLois]

If I HAD to sweeten my homemade tomato paste, I'd use the blood of freshly sacrificed babies.

But that's just my preference. Your mileage may vary.

[Mermaid]

If I HAD to sweeten my homemade tomato paste, I'd use the blood of freshly sacrificed babies.

But that's just my preference. Your mileage may vary.

I'll try that next time. Thanks for the tip!

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Do I need to remind you people that Skyline 3way chili, spaghetti slop is nasty? You seem to have drifted from demonizing Cincinnati.. :roll:

[ApostateLois]

It certainly looks nasty. I don't get the point behind it. If I want spaghetti, I'll order spaghetti. If I want a bowl of chili, I'll order that. Pretty sure most other people are the same way. Who orders both and then mixes them together? Is that a Cincinnati "thing" that inspired the making of this dish? And then they dump a shitpile of cheese on top, thus completely hiding the other flavors. Leave it to Americans to come up with a way of turning three good foods into an artery-clogging slopfest.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I guess this is where we part ways.  :)

I do taste it and I do use fresh tomatoes. I find that adding sugar to taste balances the flavor.

I hear that.

I generally add sugar to counteract the bitterness when using a Pureé to coat the onions and garlic in a bolognese.

Always add the puree first before anything else to cook it down. My pro-tip.

[Colanth]

1) The seeds of most varieties of tomato are bitter.  A pinch of sugar in a few quarts of sauce is usually enough to counteract that.  It doesn't sweeten the sauce.

2) Fresh dark red tomatoes ARE acidic.  (Fresh light pink globes aren't tomatoes, they're something the produce industry invented to sell to people who don't know any better.)  Make the sauce the day before you want to use it.  Sitting for 24 hours (refrigerated, of course) cuts the acidity.  (Don't ask me for the chemistry, I squeaked by inorganic.)  Or use a yellow plum tomato variety (if you can find any).

3) I usually take the skins off before cutting up the tomatoes.  A few seconds in boiling water, a second in ice water, and they slip off like a loose glove.

4) Make sure that you use the best tomatoes for sauce.  (Roma - a plum variety - is about the best.  Round tomatoes really aren't the best for a sauce.)  If there's even a spot on a tomato, cut the spot out and use the rest of it in a salad, not in a sauce.  If you have a spot that's off in flavor in a salad, you have one spot that's bad.  In a sauce, that spot flavors the whole sauce and ruins it.  (If you get more rain than usual, many of your tomatoes will show signs of blossom end rot or splitting.  Don't use those in a sauce.)