At least most canned tomatoes are actually ripe and have flavor...unlike many (very many) store bought tomatoes, even paste tomatoes. I'm not a fan of how variable in taste canned tomatoes can be depending on when they canned them and what fields they came from. Some brand's tomatoes taste totally different every few months because they're only buying what's on the market cheap rather than holding quality control over the type of tomato grown and it's conditions for growth. Cooking large batches of "general" tomato sauce and freezing them is awesome. You can add bulky/chunk additions to frozen blocks of sauce pretty easily when you reheat so you don't have to freeze mushy veggies into it. You can get silicon baking sheets/pans that hold 2-4+ person sized servings and freeze up blocks for the freezer. IMO, the key to a faster cooking tomato sauce from a fresh source starts with the tomato you pick for the job. If you choose a slicer tomato over a paste tomato it's going to take longer to cook...if you don't remove the seeds/gel it's going to take longer to cook. Compost if you can and you don't have to worry about wasting anything. The skins hurt nothing, but people generally leave those out because of the mouth-feel of a chunk of slimy tomato skin...it's harmless to the taste of the sauce, imo. The person suggesting throwing a thin/quick tomato sauce into a pan finished pasta is right on. There's a lot of gluten/flour thickening going on that will get your sauce to stick to the pasta itself as well as thickening the residual sauce surrounding the pasta.

Yes, it's my recipe, Lexlani. It looks like you have an old copy. I've since added after 'To can:'...DO NOT ADD CREAM WHEN CANNING. There was a little confusion when I first posted it...I forget not everyone knows not to can dairy. You still have a lot of low acid vegies (the carrots, onion and all that garlic)and it needs to be processed in a pressure canner, just not as long as it would when using chicken broth. ksrogers may be thinking of the flavor of the final product (?). Many times added herbs will turn bitter when processed, but I've never noticed it with this recipe (I usually wind up using dried basil).

I like "Blue Ribbon Preserves," but some of its recipes don't follow currant canning guidelines and I avoid those. The curd is an example. Hence, the caution about using some of its recipes without careful checking. However, comparing the recipe on page 254 (I'm assuming it's that one and not the "Easy Spaghetti Sauce") to the one in "So Easy to Preserve," which is a standard, safe canning guide, the 15-pounds of tomatoes recipe calls for 2 cups of low-acid vegetables (1 cup each onions and sliced mushrooms) plus let's say an added 1/2 cup of assorted fresh herbs. It also has increased acidity with the cup of red wine. The oil is precisely half of that in the "So Easy to Preserve Recipe" as is the tomato weight. The "So Easy to Preserve" recipe calls for 2 cups of low-acid vegetables, not including the pound of mushrooms, which is about another 6 cups sliced or 2-3 cups cooked down. In other words, double the tomatoes and more than double the low-acid veggies than the "Blue Ribbon Preserves" recipe. The processing time (also pressure canned) is also 10 minutes less for pints than "Blue Ribbon Preserves", which calls for a full 30 minutes for pints. I'm not "official" so take it for what it's worth, but in this case I'd feel comfortable canning a recipe more acid and processed for a longer time than the University of Georgia-approved one in "So Easy to Preserve." Carol

This is one of those try it and see kinds of things. The 1 tsp of each is what I would try. I don't generally like flavor concentrates, but I take your word for it that the KAF is awesome. :) You can also make a maple caramel sauce from scratch using maple syrup (grade B, dark and tasty) and maple sugar, but that would be expensive and since you already like Ann T's sauce, adapting it makes sense.