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Getting sauced (Pics)

Tjcoley
Tjcoley Posts: 3,551
edited September 2012 in EggHead Forum
Spent the day at the daughter in laws family for their semi annual Tomato sauce marathon.  Start with 650 pounds of tomatoes, fresh picked from the Amish farm next door.
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They all had to be cleaned and quartered (Grand daughter was a big help)
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Had 8 propane burners going to cook down the tomatoes, and cook the sauce.

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propane stoves (7 burners) to cook the 90 heads of garlic, 78 large onions, peppers and oil
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Add in some spices
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End up with the best sauce money can not buy

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At the end of the day, we put up 350 quarts of sauce.  Oh, and the overnight brisket I did on the Egg was a big hit for lunch..  8 1/2 pounder, 8 people, no leftovers.
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__________________________________________
It's not a science, it's an art. And it's flawed.
- Camp Hill, PA

Comments

  • All of this is fantastic. What's the chance the prize for first reply to this post is a bottle of that sauce.

    Very cool post.
    Finally back in the Badger State!

    Middleton, WI
  • Tjcoley
    Tjcoley Posts: 3,551
    Badger, as a fellow Big Ten fan, let's see if I can hook you up. You had a better day today than my boys did (of course in Central PA it was not only a bad day but a bad 10 months). If you are coming out to the final game of the season let me know and the sauce is yours.
    __________________________________________
    It's not a science, it's an art. And it's flawed.
    - Camp Hill, PA
  • Solson005
    Solson005 Posts: 1,911
    edited September 2012
    Wow, that looks like a fun time! With over 100 jars how many did you end up with? Any leftovers for a Big 12 fan  :))
    Large & Small BGE, CGW Two-Tier Swing Rack for BOTH EGGS, Spider for the Wok, eggCARTen & and Cedar Pergola my Eggs call home in Edmond, OK. 
  • Can I ask if you left the tomato skin on? This is my first year trying to make pizza sauce for use on the egg. 
    LBGE, Weber Performer. Located in Franklin County Pa.
  • bigphil
    bigphil Posts: 1,390
    looks great Tj nothing like fresh made sauce btw UPS runs past my house lol 
    Large Big Green Egg , XL Big Green Egg . BBQ Guru, Weber Kettle, Weber Q grill for road trips.
  • SkinnyV
    SkinnyV Posts: 3,404
    edited September 2012
    awesome, do you also have to peel the tomatoes?

    I want to do something like this but not sure how I find a bulk deal on good tomatoes here in seattle. As for the Big 10... we are some happy beavers overe here after the weekend! Looking much improved.
    Seattle, WA
  • Tjcoley
    Tjcoley Posts: 3,551
    edited September 2012
    We didn't peel the tomatoes.  After cooking them down, we ran them through a juicer/strainer on the Kitchenaid

    By the end of the day it looked like the final scene from Fargo.You're left with a smooth puree, with all of the skins and hard parts ground out.  We ended up with 350 quarts, plus a couple we used for dinner that night.
    __________________________________________
    It's not a science, it's an art. And it's flawed.
    - Camp Hill, PA
  • Mucho trabajo !!!!!
    __________________________________________

    Dripping Springs, Texas.
    Just west of Austintatious


  • nolaegghead
    nolaegghead Posts: 42,102
    That does look like der wood chipper on Fargo. Oh yaaah.
    ______________________________________________
    I love lamp..
  • Mike8it
    Mike8it Posts: 468
    Very nice! That's a ton of work but I would be willing to bet worth every second.
  • Hungry Joe
    Hungry Joe Posts: 1,566
    edited September 2012

    Great job on tomato day. 350 jars is a lot of work, the most we ever do is maybe 150 and it has been a while since we did that many. This year we did maybe 120 but we were breaking in a new "tomato machine". I know what it must take to process all those tomatoes with the kitchen aid. We just jar the tomato puree and make sauce from that.

    I don't have pictures of the new machine but I thought I would post some of the old "machine". This has been in the family my whole life so that makes it 50+ years old. My grandfather had it made back in the day.

     

    Here is "The Machine".

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    We also cook the tomatoes before we run them through. The machine processes them as fast as I can dump them.

     

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    Sauce.

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    The skins.

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    ! more.

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  • Just wow.

    XXL #82 out of the first 100, XLGE X 2, LBGE (gave this one to daughter 1.0) , MBGE (now in the hands of iloveagoodyoke daughter 2.0) and lots of toys

  • Tjcoley
    Tjcoley Posts: 3,551
    @HungryJ oe - agree with @Doc - WOW.  What is the machine?  The KA is always the bottleneck in our operation.  Your machine looks like it would for sure solve that problem.
    __________________________________________
    It's not a science, it's an art. And it's flawed.
    - Camp Hill, PA
  • Hungry Joe
    Hungry Joe Posts: 1,566

    The "machine " as the family calls it is an engineering marvel in our minds that will keep getting passed down the line even though I officially retired it this year. It was replaced with one of these:

     http://www.tomatomilling.com/product_detail_27521.aspx

    While it still works, the acid in the tomatoes have made pin holes in a lot of the welds and I just got tired of plugging them with aluminum foil. Besides that with the new machine all we need to do is half or quarter the tomatoes and process them, no more cutting out the part where the stem was, crushing them by hand so they would soften up faster, cooking them then running them through the machine and then cooking them again until the sauce was thick enough for us. The whole cooking before grinding thing is eliminated which cut off about 1/3 or more of the time it takes to do tomatoes. Now we process them and cook the sauce down to the consistency we want and jar them.

  • Hungry Joe
    Hungry Joe Posts: 1,566

    Here are some pictures inside the machine. 

    imageimageimageimage
  • gdenby
    gdenby Posts: 6,239
    Tremendous work, Tjcoley, and Hungry Joe! I helped put up about a 100 qts. a year for a few years, but that was over a period of a few weeks. We were very clumsy. Peeled by hand, and pushed the pulp thru strainers to remove the seeds. Nevertheless, that sauce was great, as I'm sure yours is.