I always like to have a vegetable tomato sauce in the freezer to add to meals or to create something quick and easy. I make a big batch when I find tomatoes cheap. It is also a great way to use old vegetables instead of throwing them away! I get out my sauce regularly to add to bolognaise, chilli, curries, Mexican food, casseroles, my paprika chicken and many more dishes. I therefore always make it free of herbs and spices so that I can add these later to suit the dish.

I am by no means an exact cook and prefer to add things by sight and taste. Therefore my tomato sauce is never exactly the same. It changes depending what I have in the fridge and garden. It makes writing a recipe hard but it means you can add your own twist to it.

Here goes at my instructions:

-For my most recent batch of tomato sauce I used about 2.5 kgs of fresh tomatoes, a small eggplant, two leaves of silverbeat, some old broccoli, a carrot, and half a large zucchini. (But add any veges you have in your fridge)

-I use a stick blender to blend all the tomatoes and vegetables and I add it all to a slow cooker.

-Sometimes I add a can of tomatoes or pasata (100% tomatoes) if it looks like I need more liquid or tomato

-Cook for 5 hours in the slow cooker (or until it looks combined and a nice red color), stirring occasionally

-If you like at the end, you can use a stick blender to blizz it more and get a the consistency you are after

-Freeze in portions ready to use for various meals.

Some notes:

–While I prefer using fresh tomatoes, I sometimes I have used pasata or tinned tomatoes if fresh are too expensive.

-If you do not have a slow cooker, you can use a pot. I just like being able to forget about it for a while.

-While I know this is a great way to hide vegetables, I usually think of this sauce as giving a boost of vegetables as I usually add chunks of vegetables to my meals as well. This is because I like my son to learn to eat vegetables!