OT, today's cook, No Egg involved, no eating required.

Zmokin

I recently ran out of a couple of food "staples".

So, this AM, I started making a batch of marinara sauce in my slow cooker using fresh herbs from my yard.

Then I made a batch of condensed cream of mushroom.  I just froze the equivalent of 4 cans of condensed soup, and later tonight I'll home can 7 pints of marinara.

Carolina Q

I gotta try that condensed soup thing. I can't eat canned soup any more (sodium) so if I want soup, I have to make my own. Not a bad thing, just more work. Care to share the recipe? 

Marinara too, for that matter. I have tried Lidia Bastianich's marinara recipe. Quite simple and quite good. 
http://www.lidiasitaly.com/recipes/detail/589

Zmokin

Carolina Q said:

I gotta try that condensed soup thing. I can't eat canned soup any more (sodium) so if I want soup, I have to make my own. Not a bad thing, just more work. Care to share the recipe? 

Carolina Q said:

I gotta try that condensed soup thing. I can't eat canned soup any more (sodium) so if I want soup, I have to make my own. Not a bad thing, just more work. Care to share the recipe? 

Marinara too, for that matter. I have tried Lidia Bastianich's marinara recipe. Quite simple and quite good. 
http://www.lidiasitaly.com/recipes/detail/589

Here is my recipe for "condensed"cream of mushroom soup.  It can then be used to substitute in any recipe requiring one can 10.75 oz of "condensed" cream of mushroom soup.

Thick Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients:

• 16 oz of sliced Mushrooms, chopped.
• 1 whole Garlic, minced
• 1 stick butter
• ½ cup flour
• ¼ cup cornstarch
• 1 pint chicken or turkey broth (preferably homemade)
• 1 pint half & half
  
• 4 Dashes  of Worcestershire Sauce

 

Directions:

1. Saute garlic in butter until browning begins.
2. Add broth, Worcestershire sauce & mushrooms and bring to a boil for 10 minutes or until mushrooms have cooked.
3. Cool to room temp, then puree in blender. (if desired)
4. Return to pan and add remaining ingredients.
5. Whisk continuously while heating until thickened (just starts to boil)

This makes roughly the equivalent of four cans of store bought canned condensed soup.

Due to boil down, about 48 oz, or four each 12 oz ziplocs for freezing.

Zmokin

I make my marinara sauce with no oils or meats, as I don't like what home canning does to the texture of meat.  So when I go to serve my spaghetti sauce, I add olive oil when re-heating and I brown up ground beef or Italian sausage or I add home made frozen meatballs.  Sometimes, but rarely do I serve it as no meat marinara.

Canning spaghetti sauce

 

Ingredients:

·         72.5 oz Diced tomatoes no added salt (5 - 14.5 oz cans)

·         24 oz Tomato paste (2 large cans)

·         8 oz Carrots (3mm julienned)

·         8 oz Zucchini (3mm julienned)

·         1 pkg sliced Mushrooms (diced)

·         2 Onions (diced or 3mm julienned)

·         1 Whole Garlic (pressed)

·         1 tsp Salt

·         2 tsp sugar

·         1 tbsp black pepper

·         1 tsp red pepper

·         2 teaspoon dried basil (6 tsp fresh)

·         2 tablespoon dried Oregano (6 tbsp fresh)

Directions:

1.       Cook in slow cooker (6-8 hours)

2.       Pressure can 7 pints (10 lbs 30 minutes)

 

Add olive oil and meats (optional), etc when re-heating.

Obviously you can scale this down to a single batch recipe if you want.
Note, I use no added sodium ingredients, and then add 1 tsp of salt, which puts it at ~ 80 mg sodium per 1/2 cup serving.

Carolina Q

Thanks! Bookmarked. When I had to start looking for low sodium stuff, canned tomatoes were the easiest to find.