# Tomato juice vs. sauce (using food mill)



## Leggaj5 (Jul 6, 2014)

Seems like a stupid question, but I'm new to canning tomato things...seems like the recipe for these two things are the same: cook tomatoes, grind in food mill, the resulting product is sauce/juice. I'm trying to make a sauce for pasta, etc. and a juice for Bloody Mary mix, so what in the process separates these? Boiling the tomato pulp after food milling to evaporate the water? Further straining the tomato pulp to get only the juice?


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

We like our juice thick with lots of pulp. We cut the tomatoes, cook until soft, run them through the strainer juicer, jar and pressure can. We also use this juice to fill the jars when we can tomatoes. The juice can then be drained off the tomatoes, or the juice can be cooked down into sauce. We don't can sauce as such, we make as needed but the juice can be cooked down and canned as sauce. We add herbs, celery, onion and/or garlic for sauce....James


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## DJ54 (Jul 27, 2013)

Most recipes I see for sauce, other than adding the other ingredients, says to simmer, reducing volume 1/3 to 1/2.


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## StickyFloors (Aug 4, 2014)

I cook my sauce for 24 hours so it is very thick and rich. We can it in pints since it is pretty dense at that point. 

Keep in mind if you are adding anything to the 'maters (like onion, etc.), you should pressure can for safety. If it's just 'maters alone, you can water bath.


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## Dixie Bee Acres (Jul 22, 2013)

StickyFloors said:


> I cook my sauce for 24 hours so it is very thick and rich. We can it in pints since it is pretty dense at that point.
> 
> Keep in mind if you are adding anything to the 'maters (like onion, etc.), you should pressure can for safety. If it's just 'maters alone, you can water bath.


Actually, that depends on the tomato. Many of the newer hybrids are too low in acid content to safely waterbath. Just for safety sake, I usually add a tablespoon or so of lemon juice per jar if waterbathing.


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## StickyFloors (Aug 4, 2014)

Dixie Bee Acres said:


> Actually, that depends on the tomato. Many of the newer hybrids are too low in acid content to safely waterbath. Just for safety sake, I usually add a tablespoon or so of lemon juice per jar if waterbathing.


Interesting! Good to know!


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## Werforpsu (Aug 8, 2013)

I found info on the web last year about thickening my tomato pulp/juice in the oven. you basically dehydrate it and the beauty was that it didn't boil and splatter all over. that method combined with extra tomato paste/ clear jel (because I am lazy and didn't want to make it cook down more) gave me a thick sauce that I canned in pints and jelly jars. the jelly jars tomatos are made into pizza sauce and the pints left plain.


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## StickyFloors (Aug 4, 2014)

Werforpsu said:


> I found info on the web last year about thickening my tomato pulp/juice in the oven. you basically dehydrate it and the beauty was that it didn't boil and splatter all over. that method combined with extra tomato paste/ clear jel (because I am lazy and didn't want to make it cook down more) gave me a thick sauce that I canned in pints and jelly jars. the jelly jars tomatos are made into pizza sauce and the pints left plain.


I did that this weekend! I baked the tomatoes for 90 minutes at 350 and they released the juices very nicely. So much so that I came away with only 13 quarts out of 80 LBS! Very upset about that part. But the sauce is thick and lovely.

Making vinegar out of the leftover juice and pulp after I strained through the Victorio.


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