Yep, we got tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes.

I only planted 9 tomato plants, yet I am inundated with them. When, after just one weekly harvest you end up with 2-3 pounds of them, the question becomes, “What do I DO with them?”

I’m on a quest to not buy a single item of processed food for my family. By “processed”, I mean any food that lists anything other than real food and salt in its ingredients. A can of diced tomatoes that just contains tomatoes and salt, for example, I would not classify as “processed”.

Unfortunately, you can’t find any marinara sauce on the market today that contains nothing but tomatoes and spices. They all…and I mean ALL…contain added sugar. What is up with that? Why does EVERYTHING HAVE ADDED SUGAR IN IT? Frustrating.

But, I digress. Back to the sauce. I had an idea to make some Zucchini Spaghetti (see the giant zucchini post) with meatballs for dinner. I had ALL these tomatoes but no sauce so I began to research Low Carb/Keto tomato sauce recipes on the web.

Now, I am a scratch cook. I like to make everything from scratch. Clearly, a great sauce would have real onions and veggies mixed in, but in the absence of time I opted to try this recipe…just to see how it would turn out. I was skeptical to say the least. The original recipe called for a 28-oz can of peeled, no sugar added tomatoes but I opted to use my own since I have so damn many. It was still rather time consuming, but it was just preparing the tomatoes that took up the time. Mixing up the spices and adding the whole kit and kaboodle to my VitaMix took just seconds. And the results were outstanding!

Our first tomato harvest.

Fast and Easy Marinara Sauce (No Sugar, Low Carb, Gluten Free)

Ingredients:

• 2-3 pounds fresh picked tomatoes
• 1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil or oil of your choice. (I used a combination of Avocado oil and Olive Oil)
• 2 Tbls. Red Wine Vinegar
• 1 tsp. sea salt (don’t skimp on this)
• 1 tsp. dry parsley
• 1 tsp. dried oregano
• 1 tsp. dried basil
• 1 tsp. garlic powder (not garlic salt)
• 1 tsp. onion powder (Archer Farms makes a great one!)
• 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
• 1/4 tsp. black pepper

Instructions:

1. Prepare the tomatoes.

Boil a large pot of water. Gently add 5-6 tomatoes at a time into the pot and allow to boil for about a minute. Using a slotted spoon, remove tomatoes and place in an ice bath until they are cool enough to handle. Do this to all the tomatoes. Then, remove the skins (they should slide right off) and chop roughly. I have a colander that has larger holes through which the seeds slide right through and that is how I seed my tomatoes. You can leave them intact, or choose to de-seed them any way you like.

2. Blend it all together.

Now, just put the tomatoes and all the other ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend it together for almost a minute. It doesn’t take long, and you don’t want to turn it into liquid…so watch it closely!

3. Voila! Instant Marinara sauce. And it is damn tasty!

You can use regular canning methods if you are making larger batches of this sauce, but since I was using this in a recipe that evening, I just jarred it for refrigeration until I needed it.

Instant Marinara Sauce (Low Carb/No Sugar/Keto)

From here, use it anyway you would use Marinara sauce. I like to use my Veggetti to make spaghetti out of zucchini, or you can use it to make Taco meat, or even gluten-free pizzas! I also used it to make stuffed eggplants (recipe to come!)

Let me know if you try this yourself and what YOU think. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

Please comment if these kind of recipes interest you and I’ll continue to post them!