Homemade Spaghetti Sauce Recipe

For those of you who love to garden, it always seems like you end up with SO many tomatoes come the end of summer. Our family loves to eat the tomatoes fresh in salads or by themselves, but one of our favorite ways to use tomatoes is for a homemade spaghetti sauce. It is so economical to make your own homemade spaghetti sauce with fresh tomatoes & so flavorful, too, as you can add in your own spices and extra veggies if you’d like. And such a great way to use up your bounty of fresh tomatoes. It seems those tomatoes always ripen at the exact same time so it’s impossible to use them up fast enough, so this recipe is perfect!

This homemade spaghetti sauce recipe for canning will give you the opportunity to fill up your cupboard with a marinara sauce for the fall & winter. The taste from the garden fresh tomatoes can’t be beat & you can try a mix of tomatoes – we like to use the regular slicing tomatoes as well as some Roma tomatoes for a mix. But you can use whichever tomatoes you prefer!

This is such an easy way to try canning tomatoes and preserve your tomatoes to be used in a flavorful sauce – rather than just serving a store-bought spaghetti sauce. Using homegrown tomatoes really brings out the flavor of the tomatoes. I also love that if you have any food allergies or insensitivities, you know exactly what is going into your homemade spaghetti sauce recipe so you can adjust as needed for dietary reasons. You can easily make any substitutions necessary if you need to cut out certain ingredients, which can be difficult to find with store-bought marinara sauces.

Here are the step by step directions & photos for this easy homemade spaghetti sauce recipe!

How to Make Homemade Spaghetti Sauce:

Ingredients:

13 pounds of tomatoes
2.5 onions
2 red bell peppers
1 green bell pepper
12 oz. can tomato paste
1/8 cup soy sauce
1.5 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar packed
1/8 cup sea salt
5 cloves of garlic chopped
1.5 Tbsp. dried oregano
1.5 Tbsp. dried basil
2 bay leaves
Lemon juice for jars

Equipment Used:

Pressure Canner – this is the one we used in the recipe

Canning Funnel

Quart Size Mason Jars

Food Processor

Directions:

Fill a large pot half way full with water, bring to a boil. Slowly add tomatoes one at a time. Allow to boil for about 2 minutes.

Remove tomatoes with slotted spoon and place into an ice water bath. Peel the tomato skins and cut into halves or quarters.

Using a food processor, add bell peppers and onions in batches until all are finely chopped.

In a large stockpot, place all peeled tomatoes and add in the onion and bell pepper mixture then add in tomato paste, brown sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt, oregano, bay leaves, and basil.

Bring pot to a boil. Once boiling, reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for 4 hours, make sure to stir every 15 minutes or so. Discard bay leaves.

Sterilize the canning jars in a hot water bath, and for each quart jar add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.

Ladle spaghetti sauce into jars, leaving 1/2-in. headspace at the top; wipe rims and place lids.

If using a water bath method – Place jars in boiling water for 40 minutes.

If using a pressure canner follow the instructions to process quart size jars of tomatoes

This recipe will make approximately 5 quarts of homemade spaghetti sauce for canning.

Printable Recipe for Homemade Spaghetti Sauce:

Here’s a printable version of the Homemade Spaghetti Sauce recipe for you to print off to put in your recipe binder or notebook.