I both canned and froze pasta sauce last year, and I much preferred the frozen sauce. You have much more control over what you can put into the sauce you plan to freeze, no issues with worrying about safety like canning. Digdirt (ie Dave) gave me this recipe 2 yrs ago when I was strictly freezing, and it's become my #1 recipe. 20 tomatoes, halved and seeded 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon pepper 1 cup finely diced onion 2 teaspoons minced garlic 1 tablespoon finely chopped oregano 1 tablespoon finely chopped thyme 1 cup white wine Preheat oven to 325. In a large roasting pan, place tomato halves, cut side up. Sprinkle with oil, salt and pepper, onion, garlic, and herbs. Bake tomatoes for 2 hrs. Check tomatoes after 1 hr and turn down heat if they seem to be cooking to fast. Then turn oven to 400 and bake another 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and process through a food mill. Discard skins. Put tomatoes in a large non-reactive pot and add white wine and bring to a boil, reduce to low head and cook to desired consistency. Freeze in containers. I also tried white wine instead of red wine, thinking red wine was more "Italian". But, the white wine gives a much better taste, in my opinion. Enjoy your tomatoes and post often. I have learned so much from the wealth of experience on this site!

My mother-in-law does this constantly. Pots of meat broth and chicken curry are cooked and left out at 80 degree room temperature--for many days at a time. The food is reheated to a boil and then served with a smile. Other cooked foods like hard-boiled eggs or hamburgers are also left unrefrigerated, and consumed days later. Like dcarch, I believe their GI tracts are apparently accustomed to handling whatever bacterial load might be in these meals. Unfortunately, this practice does cause some problems when we visit the in-laws, as I have become paranoid about food that is served. Food poisoning can be extremely dangerous, much beyond GI symptoms. It is a difficult balancing act to maintain courtesy and respect for one's elders while protecting young children from 4-day old soup with heat-stable toxins.

jasdip, you do need something between the bottom of the pot and your jars, although I've put them right in and not had them break. I think I was just lucky. When I was young and broke and first starting a household, I put a folded dish towel under the jars to keep them from clunking on the bottom fo the pot. It worked fine, although you have to be careful about putting the jars in because the towel will float up until it gets weighted down by the jars. I have an Excaliber dehydrator and love it, I think zucchini and apples are my favorite dehydrated items. Oh, and onions, no matter how many layers I use to bag them, my whole freezer still smells like onions. I also dehydrate a lot of hot peppers for Elery, he adds them to a lot of stuff although I don't use very many. I've been pretty spectacularly unsuccessful at dehydrating tomatoes and strawberries, though. The strawberries became chewy little red bits that tasted like nothing. The tomatoes never became crisp enough to powder, although I could put them in the food processor and chop them up into bits after dehydration. I didn't like them with the peels on, the peels became little chewy pieces of "stuff" so I had to peel them and that made them harder to handle. And I didn't think they kept their flavor very well, I was not impressed. I'm considering trying a tomato leather this year, tomatoes are a fruit and fruit leather is done by lots of people but so far I have not been impressed with my dehydrated tomatoes. I admit, I do tend to like different vegetables preserved in different ways. I don't like dehydrated potatoes either, they remind me of the boxed instant potatoes. I do par-fry them and put them in the freezer for french fries, though. I like green beans canned, but I like corn frozen. I like berries frozen, but I like apples dried. It's all a matter of finding out which method works best for you and your particular tastes. Annie

Her recipe. It's a cooking, not canning recipe. A little more complicated than the one I throw together and I don't make 1 1/2 quarts at a time, but I don't know what it would hurt to freeze what's leftover - it might slightly affect taste, it wouldn't be a safety thing. If you were terribly disappointed you'd just know not to do it again. But I freeze spaghetti sauce all the time and no one complains. There are I think 7 or 8 quart bags of lasagna sauce with meat in my freezer right now from a cooking frenzy my SIL had last month, and her small freezer was full. I'm babysitting sauce until she wants it ;0) 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onion (1 large onion) 1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves) 1 cup (10 ounces) tomato paste 1 cup cider vinegar 1 cup honey 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce 1 cup Dijon mustard 1/2 cup soy sauce 1 cup (8 ounces) hoisin sauce 2 tablespoons chili powder 1 tablespoon ground cumin 1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes Heat the oil in a large saucepan over low heat, add the onions and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until the onions are translucent but not browned. Add the garlic and cook for one more minute. Add the tomato paste, vinegar, honey, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chili powder, cumin and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes. Use immediately or pour into a container and refrigerate for several weeks.