This cherry tomato freezer sauce is the perfect answer to the abundance of tomatoes we receive every summer. It’s quick, savory, and perfect for keeping for the winter.
There are many ways to make tomato sauce, but this cherry tomato freezer sauce couldn’t be more simple and more delicious. At the moment, we have so many small and medium tomatoes in our garden, in every shape and color, that it’s hard to keep up! While I still love canning, the days have been hot and it’s not always the best time to heat up the kitchen, making traditional sauce. This sauce is very hands-off, quick and easy, and so I’ve been leaning more towards making it. Plus, we’ll get to enjoy it all winter long!
Why use cherry tomatoes in a sauce?
And while we all know sauce made with regular tomatoes, I especially love using cherry tomatoes. For the most part, they’re a bit sweeter than regular tomatoes. And more importantly, there will come a time when the garden and farmers market has too many of them. We mostly eat them raw, but how many can you eat? When we couldn’t finish them all, we made sauce, and I was forever a convert! Cherry tomatoes make a rustic, chunky sauce. Yes, you’re keeping the skin and seeds but they’re so small, you don’t end up noticing them.
While it’s labeled “cherry tomato” freezer sauce, you can evidently see that I snuck in some larger yellow “peach fuzz” tomatoes. They’re relatively small this year, about 2 inches, and so I quartered them and used them to fill in some gaps. And that’s totally fine to do, use whatever you have on hand.
Grab the step-by-step recipe below. And you were worried you wouldn’t get to make tomato sauce this season! Get to it!
A Note About Varieties
There are so many types of cherry tomatoes: small miniature ones like Sungold (they’re my favorite), yellow pear, grape tomatoes, small cherry, medium, cherry, and more. I like mixing them up for a special variety of flavor. The end result will not be a vibrant red sauce, but a rich, homestyle rustic sauce with beautiful flavors and a bit of a lighter hue, like this one above. Like I said, I also added the peach fuzz tomato, and also some yellow pear tomatoes. But this definitely lightened the sauce in color, but the flavor was still unbeatable!
If you still want a red sauce, just use plain red cherry tomatoes and your sauce will look darker like this.
You can also doctor it up as you wish: add in garlic, your favorite herbs, even red peppers to make it completely your own version. You do you. You can’t go wrong with this sauce!
Freezing Instructions
For freezing the sauce, follow theses steps:
- Follow the recipe below until you process the sauce.
- Add the sauce to freezer bags, labeled and dated.
- Leave headspace, about an inch or two, so that if the sauce expands when frozen the bag won’t pop.
- Pinch the bag to release extra air and seal it.
- Freeze flat.
- When frozen, you can line all the bags up together in a row for easy freezer storage.
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- Freezer Bags
- Pyrex Basics Baking Dish (9×13)
- Sharpie Permanent Marker for labeling freezer bags
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Cherry Tomato Freezer Sauce
Equipment
- Baking/casserole dish (any size, but 9×13 is best)
- Food Processor
- Freezer bags and sharpie pen
Ingredients
- 4-6 cups cherry tomatoes, any color or size
- drizzle of olive oil, optional
- salt & pepper, to taste
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- few sprigs of thyme, oregano, and/or basil
- 2 pinches chili flakes
Instructions
Sauce Instructions
- Use an oven-proof caserole dish of any size. I enjoy using a 9×13 pan and getting in about 4-6 cups of tomatoes. Adjust as necessary (smaller pan, less tomatoes), or even double the pan and double the tomatoes.
- Simply gather enough cherry tomatoes so they lay in a single layer. Feel free to use any shape of cherry tomato: small, medium, yellow pear tomatoes, anything you have. If you have some medium sized tomatoes (like I did), you can quarter then and add them in also. Just get them all in one layer for the pan you're using.
- Pierce all tomatoes with a knife so they don't pop in the oven. If your tomatoes are a bit on the bigger cherry size, quarter them.
- Drizzle with a little olive oil (very optional ~ you can make this completely fat free), and throw in the garlic.
- Add a few sprigs of thyme, oregano, and/or basil, salt, and pepper.
- Roast at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes, until the tomato skins have broken and released some juices.
- Let cool, remove the herbs, and process in a food processor. I like to add a pinch or two of chili flakes at this point. I also pulse mine so it remains relatively chunky, but you can go all the way and make it smooth. Taste for seasoning and adjust.
Freezing Instructions
- Add the sauce to freezer bags, labeled and dated.
- Leave headspace, about an inch or two, so that if the sauce expands when frozen the bag won't pop. Pinch the bag to release extra air and seal it.
- Freeze flat. When frozen, you can line all the bags up together in a row for easy freezer storage.
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