One of the best changes you can do when migrating to a real food diet is swapping out store bought foods for homemade classics.
When I encourage my clients to step back into making staples, I usually hear “oh, I don’t have time for that”. I know we are all pressed for time these days, but staples like this homemade tomato sauce don’t actually take much time hovering over the stove. The sauce bubbles away on the stove and essentially cooks itself.
Store bought tomato sauce contains around 25 % sugar, and often this is sugar is in the form of the highly processed high fructose corn syrup. I do use a rice malt syrup to balance the flavours of this sauce because this sweetener is low in fructose.
I have adapted this sauce from the cookbook Wholefoods by Jude Blereu. For those who are not familiar with Jude, she is one of the early pioneers of promoting eating with real foods in Australia. I highly recommend adding her cookbooks to your collection.
- • 12 Roma tomatoes
- • 1 brown onion finely diced
- • 2 garlic cloves minced
- • 1 tablespoon olive oil
- • 1 sprig oregano
- • 3 teaspoons rice malt syrup
- • 10 basil leaves chopped
- • sea salt and pepper
- Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil.
- Cut an X into the bottom of each tomato.
- In batches, blanch each tomato in the boiling water for 15-20 seconds. Remove the tomato from the boiling water and let them cool slightly.
- Use a sharp knife to remove the skins from the tomatoes. Discard the skins. Dice the tomato flesh.
- In a large saucepan or fry pan heat the olive oil. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes. Add the garlic and saute for 2 minutes.
- Add all the remaining ingredients and heat the mixture over a medium heat to a simmer. Cover the pan and simmer the sauce for around 40 minutes.