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Sous Vide Tomato Sauce

ParkerCook_66639

I love to make me some spaghetti sauce. Plain and simple. I love to use San Marzano tomatoes and usually end up buying some really nice puree to use when I make some amatriciana and what not. My question is could you intensify/concentrate the flavor of the puree (or any type of canned tomatoes) by cooking the contents sous vide before you make the sauce itself?

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Chris_Young_80640

Hmmm, never tried a prolonged sous vide cooking of tomatoes to enhance the flavor. Worth a try, and would be curious to know the result.

Leigh_Jones_66597

I'm guessing that the more effective way to intensify the flavor would be to reduce the sauce.

matthew.snyder77

I tried this over the weekend using cherry tomatoes (I usually San Marzanos as well, but I wanted to enter the Farmers Market challenge). I used my standard basic tomato sauce recipe (the Mario Batali recipe but with a bit more carrot and less onion), and simply combined the ingredients in a Ziploc bag with some extra virgin olive oil and then into a bath at 88° C / 190 °F for 90 minutes.

Flavorwise the results were tasty enough, but the finished product was far too soupy. (So much so that I decided to forego sharing the results here) I think if I try it again I'll strain the liquid (and reserve) and also take the time to peel the tomatoes. I was going for a different take on the sauce, wanting to keep the tomatoes identifiable in the finished product. But it was not appealing.

(btw, @ParkerCook the sauce ended up in an Amatriciana!)

Brendan_Lee_56950

I did something similar earlier in the week for a quick pasta sauce. I took a can of san marzanos, shallots, garlic, oregano, olive oil (basically similar to the chilled tomato soup recipe here) and blitzed them in the blender, bagged them with some rendered panchetta and sauteed onions and garlic and cooked at 85C for 2h. The end result was definitely very soupy but I expected that. I ladled some into a hot non-stick pan, reduced a bit and tossed with bucatini and it was pretty delicious. Plus cleanup was a breeze. I would say after the reduction you'd be hard pressed to tell it wasn't cooked for hours and hours traditionally.

ParkerCook_66639

Way to test it out guys! I've been so busy these past few weeks I haven't even had time to test out my own thoughts!

seijoed

Good to know.

Yitzchok_Bernstein_88575

Cool.
Why not reduce the tomato, then bag it with the other ingredients and then cook it sous vide. The flavors will then concentrate further (and meld). This prbably defeats the easy clean up though.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Yeah easy cleanup and I wanted to allow the tomatoes and panchetta to mingle in the bag. I think I will try and reduce some tomatoes before hand though when I have more time to see the difference it makes.