Get 'Er Done Spaghetti Sauce (Heavy on the Garlic)
Built around one pressure canner load (7 quarts) as the base unit, so scaling up just means running more loads back to back. My garlic rule: add a clove at a time until you hear your ancestors somewhere murmur “that's enough, dear.” Then add two more, because they always say that a little early.
Ingredients (per 7-quart / 1 canner load)
- 20 lbs fresh tomatoes (or thawed from the freezer — no judgment here, that's half the point of this whole operation)
- 1½ cups chopped onion
- 20 garlic cloves, minced (this is the "reasonable person" amount — see notes)
- 1½ cups chopped green pepper or celery
- 1½ lbs fresh mushrooms, sliced (optional, but they're not going to eat themselves)
- 7 tsp salt
- 3 tbsp dried oregano
- 6 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
- 6 tbsp brown sugar
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1¾ cups bottled lemon juice — NOT fresh (this is 4 tbsp per quart jar, added directly to each jar, not mixed into the sauce)
Steps
- Peel and prep tomatoes. Wash, blanch 30-60 seconds until skins split, ice bath, slip off skins, core and chop. If yours came out of the freezer, the skins basically fall off on their own — blanching optional, gratitude for freezer-you mandatory.
- Combine tomatoes and vegetables. In your largest stockpot, combine chopped tomatoes, onion, garlic, pepper or celery, and mushrooms if using. Take a moment to admire how much garlic that actually looks like in a pile. This is normal. This is correct.
- Simmer down. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the sauce reaches your desired thickness — usually 1-3 hours depending on how juicy your tomatoes are. Go do laundry. Come back. Stir. Repeat.
- Season the sauce. Stir in salt, oregano, parsley, brown sugar, and oil. Simmer 5 more minutes. Taste it. Taste it again. This step has no defined end point, only vibes.
- Acidify each jar. Put 4 tablespoons of bottled lemon juice directly into each hot, clean quart jar — do not mix it into the pot of sauce. This is the one step where you actually have to be precise, so put the taste-testing spoon down for a second.
- Fill jars. Ladle hot sauce into the jars (on top of the lemon juice already in each jar), leaving 1 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles, wipe rims clean, apply lids.
- Pressure can. Process at the correct pressure and time for your gauge type, altitude, and jar size — verify this against a current tested source before your first batch. Let pressure return to zero naturally before opening the canner. No peeking, no rushing, the canner does not care about your schedule.
Notes
This must be PRESSURE canned, not processed in a boiling water bath. The onion, garlic, and pepper content means plain acid isn't enough to make this safe for water-bath canning, even though tomatoes alone would qualify. Skipping the pressure canner here is a real safety issue, not just a guideline — the one part of this recipe I will not make jokes about.
On the garlic: 20 cloves per 7 quarts works out to about 3 cloves per quart, which is already a lot by most standards and merely "getting started" by mine. Adjust to your own ancestors' tolerance level.
The bottled lemon juice goes into each jar individually, not stirred into the pot of sauce. Use bottled juice specifically (not fresh) since it has a standardized, tested acidity that fresh-squeezed can't guarantee.
Processing pressure and time depend on your canner type (weighted vs. dial gauge) and your altitude, and this is genuinely safety-critical to get right. Before your first batch, verify the exact pressure and processing time for tomato sauce with added vegetables against a current source like the National Center for Home Food Preservation (nchfp.uga.edu) or your county Extension office. As a general reference point, this style of sauce commonly runs around 20-25 minutes for quarts at 10-15 psi depending on gauge type and altitude, but confirm the exact numbers before you can.
Since 7 quarts is a standard single canner load, scaling this up (14, 21, 28 quarts, all the way to 49) just means running multiple canner loads back to back, not one giant batch. Prep all your tomatoes and sauce at once if you want, but plan to process it in 7-quart increments through the canner. Multiply every ingredient by however many canner loads you're doing — 2x for 14 quarts, 7x for the full 49-quart marathon.
Tomato quantity is approximate and depends on variety and juiciness — err on the side of more if unsure, since sauce cooks down significantly as it simmers. Ask me how I know.
Full disclosure: I'm a rebel canner at times, when nobody's looking and I'm feeling my oats. This written recipe isn't that — it's the by-the-book version, exactly as it should be for anyone reading it. Your kitchen, your rules, whatever you decide to do in it. But you didn't learn that from me.