Big red sauce prep of 2017.

I thawed all of my "red" tomato juice for a large batch of sauce to can, on Labor Day.   (I still have two frozen bags of "dark" juice, which are either CP, F3s, or both.) By weight the frozen red juice was about 12.9 kilograms; this translates to over 13 quarts of liquid, assuming it's mostly water.  I had to thaw it out in 2 pots - the 12 qt pasta cooker and also my big canning pot.   After reducing it a few hours in both pots, and also reducing 2 quarts of the stuff in the oven in baking pans, it fit in the 12 qt pot and was around 8-9 quarts volume.   Added: 1.5 chopped onion, 1.5 bulb diced garlic+ 2 tsp garlic powder, about 1 cup fresh chopped basil (all that was left from my garden), about 2 tbsp salt, ~4 tbsp oregano and some sicilian spices. The end result was pretty good though when I had it on pasta the next day I thought it could use a bit more salt.   Better too little than too much though.

And in the end, I reduced it to about 6+1/4 quarts. (canned 6.) This was a pretty good thickness compared to my previous sauce attempts, but it really still could be reduced more - I bet if this got down to 5 or even 4 quarts it would be spectacular.  Of course the risk of burning it goes up the thicker it gets.   I may try to make a decent thick quart from the remaining "dark" juice.

Tomato press yields summer 2017

Saucy

On Sunday 8/20/17 I thawed all of amy frozen, pressed yellow tomato juice - by weight, this was about 6-7 quart equivalent.  I reduced this down to only 2 quarts of finished pasta sauce.  It turned out well.