can you leave skin on tomatoes when making sauce

In case you hadn’t guessed by now, it’s Tomato Week here at Casa de Bostwick. Enjoy this easy Tomato Sauce Recipe with Fresh Tomatoes (No Peeling Required!) recipe!

Yes, you can leave skin on tomatoes when making sauce! Just use a food processor to transform whole tomatoes into sauce. This saves lots of time from having to boil the tomatoes first to loosen the skin enough to peel. We also figure keeping the skins on retains all the vitamins and minerals that the skin contains.

But regardless of how youre preparing them, theres another reason you might not want to peel your tomatoes: those flavonols we mentioned. Theyre a kind of plant-based antioxidant and, as mentioned earlier, like other plants that are good for you, they impart a bitter flavor. But studies have linked flavonols with lower risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other age-related complications, and you wont get much of them if you peel your tomatoes—up to 98 percent of flavonols found in tomatoes were found in the skin. So keeping your tomato intact will maximize its nutritional value to you. (Alternately you can save the skin for later use.)

If youre putting up a bumper crop of tomatoes, or even just making a huge pot of sauce with them, well, first of all, I envy you. (Alas—our tomato plants got swamped with rain this summer and whatever fruit didnt rot on the vine was carried away by rodents. Such is urban farming.) But if you—or the farmers at your local market—were more fortunate with your tomato harvest this year, youre probably dreading the time youll have to spend blanching, chilling, and peeling all those pounds of tomatoes before cooking or canning them. Is this step even necessary?

Obviously theres no reason to peel tomatoes that are going into something like a salad, or sliced onto a grilled cheese sandwich: the skin is what helps everything hang together. Ditto tomatoes youre slow-roasting in the oven; if you remove the skin theyll just melt away.

Oh, and also: peeling tomatoes is sort of annoying. But if you must…How do you peel tomatoes?

The tomato skin is a different texture from the tomato flesh, and will remain so in sauces and purées—youll get tiny chunks of skin instead of an uniformly smooth mixture. Moreover, the tomato skin is heavy in a kind of nutrient called flavonols, which impart a bitter flavor. (More on this below.) Whether either of these conditions bothers you or not is entirely your thing. If you want to go by the book, a few questions to guide you: Do you hope these tomatoes will resemble something like a sauce when everything is through? Then you probably want to peel them. Same goes if youre canning tomatoes for a later time, when theyll probably be turned into a sauce. Though its completely a matter of preference, for the smoothest, mellowest sauce, you might consider peeling.Why wouldnt you peel tomatoes?

Tomato Sauce Recipe with Fresh Tomatoes

The gazpacho earlier this week was the kickoff.

I imagine it’s the same at a lot of casas around the country. When the tomatoes are ripe, everything else comes to a standstill.

Well, okay. Not quite everything.

I did turn in the final copyedits for my next book last night. I tried to tell my editor that I didn’t have time for editing because the tomatoes were ripe and there was sauce to be made.

He was not sympathetic.

This is probably because, living in New York City, he doesn’t grow tomatoes. Or make fresh tomato sauce.

These days, sadly, I don’t grow tomatoes either. My new home in Central Oregon is short in terms of garden space and growing season. Next year, I plan to experiment more with container gardening. But for now, I have to content myself with purchasing tomatoes.

Lucky for me, I scored a 25-pound box of the most gorgeous, decadent, delicious tomatoes, garden-grown in the Willamette Valley. The valley is basically a tomato-growing Eden.

We ate a couple of pounds fresh (groaning with pleasure the whole time), used three pounds for gazpacho, and put another ten pounds in the dehydrator. (Thanks to my head start on a prepared pantry, those peak-of-perfection dried tomatoes will add tons of flavor to my winter cooking.) The last ten pounds were reserved to make sauce.

Honestly, I could have used an additional 25 pounds for sauce. If not for my editor actually expecting me to do my job, and the hours I’m spending on training for my upcoming triathlon, I would have.

But my editor would not wait. Neither would the tomatoes.

At 8pm last night, after a long, mind-numbing day of editing, I pulled out the stockpots and started making tomato sauce.

Under normal circumstances, I’d devote a whole day to this. I’d blanch the tomatoes to split the skins, then peel them, then carefully remove the seeds, then cook them for hours. Then I’d put it all through the food mill to make sure the sauce was totally smooth and seed-free.

However, it was already getting dark and I was tired. Also, I cannot for the life of me find my food mill. I don’t know if it got lost in the move or it’s just hiding in a closet or box somewhere. Where it is not is in my kitchen! I know because I tore the place apart looking for it.

And so, short on time and minus a food mill, I had to come up with a Plan B.

Canning tomatoes with skins ON!

FAQ

Do you need to remove the skin from tomatoes for sauce?

Do you have to peel tomatoes for canning sauce?

Can you leave the skin on tomatoes when making tomato soup?

Can you leave tomato skins on for salsa?

Do you need a skin for tomato sauce?

Peeling: You don’t need tomato skins for sauce. The good news is that blanching your tomatoes will soften their skins until peeling them is as simple as grabbing the loose ends and tugging them off. Coring: Coring your tomato is getting rid of its center, including its stem. You can chop off the sides like an apple or dig in with a knife on top.

Is tomato sauce healthy?

Ready-made tomato sauces are not very healthy, as they have many food additives and can often contain crushed insects in the middle. Preferably homemade sauces.

How do you remove tomato skin from tomato sauce?

You can use a food processor or blender to reduce the tomato skin residue in your sauce. Generally, the longer you blend alters how smooth it is. A few whirls of the blades will leave you with a rough texture.

Should you leave tomato skins on?

Leaving the skins on causes them to curl up in the sauce, but some people like the texture and nutrients skins give. Most commonly it’s recommended to peel tomatoes when making sauces to avoid any stringy pieces. Another point to mention is that the skins can make your sauce bitter – I think removing them makes a more premium sauce.