An easy chef-tested recipe for Roasted Tomato Sauce made with fresh summer tomatoes, garlic, and herbs. This is the same technique I relied on for years as a restaurant owner and caterer to make the most of summer's harvest. It can be made ahead and frozen or canned to enjoy all year! Video.
Back in our restaurant and catering days, we would end up with lots of extra tomatoes from our farm delivery-so many, in fact, that we had to get very creative with them! We learned quickly that roasting brought out the deepest, richest flavor, and soon we were filling our ovens with sheet pans of summer tomatoes. The result was heavenly, and this is how our roasted tomato sauce came to be.
As a chef and recipe developer, I've made this sauce countless times over the years, both for clients and at home, and it never disappoints. Oven-roasting concentrates the natural sweetness of tomatoes, intensifies their flavor, and makes a sauce that's far superior to anything store-bought. Tip: If you're looking for a faster, stovetop version, take a look at this Fast and Easy Marinara Sauce!
Why You’ll Love this Roasted Tomato Sauce Recipe
Back in our restaurant and catering days, we would end up with lots of extra tomatoes from our farm delivery-so many, in fact, that we had to get very creative with them! We would load up our ovens with sheet pans full of summer tomatoes, and the result was heavenly! This is how our roasted tomato sauce came to be.
Oven-roasted tomato sauce completely transforms summer tomatoes, concentrating their sweetness and intensifying their flavor even more! Tip: If you are looking for a faster, stove-top version, take a look at this Fast and Easy Marinara Sauce!
Roasted Tomato Sauce Ingredients
- Tomatoes: This recipe is perfect for summer’s bounty of vine-ripe fresh tomatoes. Use your favorite types of tomatoes: cherry tomatoes, heirlooms, Romas, grape tomatoes, or plum tomatoes.
- Shallots and garlic: Enhance the sauce with savory goodness.
- Fresh herbs: Fresh oregano and basil are the go-to, but feel free to add or substitute with marjoram, rosemary, or whatever you love.
- Olive oil: Use a light, good-quality one!
See the recipe card below for a full list of ingredients and measurements.
How to Make Roasted Tomato Sauce
You can make this recipe one of two ways: blend the sauce or mash the sauce. The method depends on the size of your tomatoes.
1. Prep the pan. Preheat the oven to 400F. Drizzle a large roasting pan with olive oil and sprinkle with the garlic and shallot. Place the sliced tomatoes cut-side down.
2. Roast the tomatoes. Roast the tomatoes for 30 minutes. Add the oregano and basil, then roast for 10 more minutes, or until the skins have lifted off the tomatoes. Let cool.
3. Blend or mash the sauce. Pull off the skins, then pour all of the tomatoes and their roasting juices into a bowl to mash (for a chunkier sauce) or into a blender (for a smooth sauce). Alternatively, you can use a food processor for a sauce that is mostly smooth but with some remaining texture. Pulse until desired consistency. To mash, use a fork or potato masher. Once the sauce is either mashed or blended, season with kosher salt and pepper. Taste and adjust, adding a little sugar if needed to bring the flavor around-some tomatoes have enough natural sweetness and won’t need sugar. Start with 1/2 a teaspoon, then taste and adjust.
4. Reheat or store. To use right away, reheat the sauce in a saucepan or pot. Or store in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. This sauce can be frozen, too.
Chef’s Tips
- Mash, blend, or use a food processor. For a chunkier sauce, use a fork or potato masher to mash the sauce in a bowl. For a smooth sauce, use a blender. Or for a smooth sauce with some remaining texture, use the food processor.
- If using small tomatoes: They take quite a bit longer to peel off the skins. You can always toss them in the blender with their skins on to save time.
- Tomato seeds: I leave the seeds in the sauce, but some people like to remove the seeds before mashing or blending. Up to you!
- Make it spicy! Add red pepper flakes to the sauce if you prefer more heat.
- Add more veggies: To pack in a little extra nutrition, add veggies like carrots, onions, or red bell peppers to the pan.
How to Store Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce
- Refrigerator: This recipe makes about 4 cups, enough for one or two meals, and keeps in the fridge for 5-6 days.
- Freezer: You may also freeze the sauce or can the sauce (see recipe notes) for a little burst of sunshine in the winter months, which I try to do every year. The sauce will keep in the freezer for 3-4 months.
- Reheat: Reheat the homemade marinara sauce in a saucepan on the stovetop. Avoid the microwave unless you want a mess!
What to do with Roasted Tomato Sauce
Serve the roasted cherry tomato sauce over your favorite pasta, polenta, sautéed zucchini noodles, roasted spaghetti squash, or with meatballs, like our Italian meatballs or turkey meatballs, roasted vegetables, or in lasagna. Or use as pizza sauce on our sourdough pizza crust! The possibilities are endless!
Homemade Roasted Tomato Sauce FAQs
Yes, when using fresh tomatoes, the tomato skins are often tender and full of vitamins and nutrients! You can also slip the flesh off after roasting the tomatoes.
The seeds don’t impact the flavor, but if you want a smooth sauce, you can remove them.
If the tomatoes are not fully ripe, such as near the end of the season, a pinch of sugar can cut the acidity and balance the sauce. Taste first! Your tomatoes may be sweet enough!
The tomato sauce must be acidified (with bottled lemon juice or citric acid) and processed in a boiling water bath or pressure canner. This recipe is not tested for canning, so for long-term storage, we recommend freezing instead. Follow a trusted, tested source if you'd like to can it.
Hope you love this Roasted Tomato Pasta Sauce recipe, highlighting juicy ripe summer tomatoes! A fun, simple way to extend summer’s harvest!
You may also want to check out our Simple Pan Sauce for an easy sauce recipe to elevate any dish! And don’t miss our easy pesto pasta!
Love this recipe? Please let us know in the comments and leave a 5-star ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating below the recipe card.
More Tomato Recipes You Might Like
- Grilled Tomatoes
- Fast & Easy Marinara Sauce
- Roasted Enchilada Sauce
- Simple Homemade Tomato Soup
- Summer Tomato Risotto with Saffron
WATCH: How to Make Roasted Tomato Sauce
Oven Roasted Tomato Sauce
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 40
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 4– 4 1/2 cups 1x
- Category: Sauce, preserving, canning,
- Method: Roasting, canning, freezing
- Cuisine: Italian
- Diet: Vegan
Description
An easy recipe for Roasted Tomato Sauce made with fresh summer tomatoes, garlic and herbs. Extend summer’s harvest into winter- can be made ahead and frozen or canned. Watch the video!
Ingredients
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 4– 6 cloves garlic, rough chopped
- 1 shallot, diced
- 3 lbs ripe (med-large) tomatoes, cored and cut in half ( for small tomatoes, see notes)
- —-
- 1 tablespoons fresh oregano ( or 1 teaspoon dried, or use Italian seasoning)
- 1–2 tablespoon fresh basil, torn or chopped
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt ( or salt to taste)
- pepper to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar ( optional)
Instructions
- Pre-heat ove to 400 F
- Drizzle a large, rimmed baking sheet with olive oil. Sprinkle with garlic and shallot.
- Place the sliced tomatoes cut-side down on the sheet pan and roast 30 minutes. Add the oregano and basil and roast 10 more minutes, or until skins have lifted off the tomatoes.
- Let cool, pull off the skins, then pour all the tomatoes and their roasting juices into a bowl. Mash with a fork or potato masher. Season with salt and pepper. Sometimes, to bring the flavor around I’ll add a little sugar. This depends on your palate and the tomatoes you are using ( some are sweeter than others). Start with ½ a teaspoon. Taste, adjust.
- To use right away, reheat in a pan or pot. Or refrigerate for up to 5 days, or freeze (see notes).
Notes
If roasting small tomatoes, feel free roast whole and blend the sauce with the skins on. They may not need as long in the oven, check after 20 minutes.
If canning the tomato sauce, follow these instructions:
- Prepare boiling water canner. Heat a quart-jar in gently simmering water until ready to use, do not boil. Wash lid in warm soapy water and set aside with bands.
- Add 2 tablespoons lemon juice to the hot, 4-cup, quart jar, (or 1 tablespoon to a pint jar) ladle hot tomato sauce into a hot jar leaving a ½ inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe the jar rim clean and seal lid to fingertip tight.
- Place jar in boiling water canner and process for 40 minutes. Turn off heat, let jars sit 5 minutes in the water. Remove jars and cool 12-24 hours. Check lids for seal, they should not flex when center is pressed.
- This Canning Link is helpful!
If freezing in a mason jar, make sure jar and lid are clean and sterile. Let sauce come to room temperature. Fill jars leaving 2 inches headroom at the top of the jar, to prevent jar from breaking- because sauce will expand as it freezes. Thaw in the fridge for 24-48 hours.
Nutrition
- Serving Size:
- Calories: 63
- Sugar: 3.7 g
- Sodium: 389.7 mg
- Fat: 4.6 g
- Saturated Fat: 0.7 g
- Carbohydrates: 6 g
- Fiber: 2.9 g
- Protein: 1.3 g
- Cholesterol: 0 mg
Have a bounty of heirlooms that I wasn’t sure how we were going to eat them all. Just cooked this on a whim and it’s SO GOOD. I know what I’m doing with my tomatoes every year!
Yay Katie!
Really delicious and easy sauce recipe. I had early girl tomato’s and sun sugar cherry tomatoes so no added sugar needed. Wow, really tasty sauce.
Perfect Laurie- yes, it’s amazing how sweet tomatoes can be!
OK – I need advice. First of all, this sauce is delicious. The ripe tomatoes from my garden came in the kitchen and went straight into the oven. Also used our garden shallots, basil and oregano. Fantastic! Now my question: In what recipes would you use this so that the flavor shines through? Nearly all of my recipes that call for tomato sauce only use 8-16 ounces and the flavor of the sauce, no matter how good, becomes subservient to the other ingredients. It’s delicious, but also probably can’t stand on its own such as over pasta. Other ideas? Maybe I’ll just drink it. 🙂
Not sure why my rating came through as 4 stars. I fully intended to give this the 5 stars it deserves!
thanks Mary!
Haha! I usually just serve it over pasta, or with meat balls, and sometimes I’ll blend it into soup.:)
Serving over meat balls is a great idea. Using super fresh tomatoes made it a little more watery than probably intended. I’m thinking that I can possibly boil it down a bit to concentrate the flavors more.
Thanks!
Yes, it will cook down some as you simmer the browned meatballs in it, then sprinkle with pecorino- super yummy. 😉
You can make it with eggplant lasagna, chicken parmigiana, if thick enough use it as pizza sauce, and try it and have it with mozzarella sticks.
Thank you for this. Simple mo bettah!
thanks Dennis!
I never comment or give reviews, but I have to tell you, I have probably made this at least five times and will never stop. That says alot because I’m always trying new recipes. This is ambrosia with farmers market tomatoes. We absolutely adore it. I could sit and eat it with a spoon. Thank you so much
Laurie
Awww… appreciate this Laurie!
Mine turned out really juicy. Puree it really well and call it soup. So good.
Sounds like your tomatoes were nice and ripe!
This so much imformative and helpfull.
I did and it was delicious! Thanks for sharing! I added a little heat and sweet, roasted at 425. Served over pasta with a little Parmesan. Enjoyed every bite.
Perfect Lisa! Love it!
Can I blend tomatoes with skins on? And then put in jars?
Yes you can Lenore!
Very tasty and so easy to make!
Thanks Dianne- glad you enjoyed it!
This is fabulous!! I pulled the skins off, put them in a cuisinart mini-chop and pureed them. They became a wonderfully rich paste which I added back to the sauce. Thanks so much for the recipe!
Perfect Kate, glad you liked!
Just made this and will NEVER do it any other way. OMG it is so good. We might can it if my husband will quit eating it straight out of the pot!
Hahaha! Glad you both liked it!
I picked a few dozen tomatoes from my garden last week with the intention of making 2 recipes for sauce, this and another. Well, the other never happened, this recipe is exactly what I was looking for – easy and delicious! I used a mix of red, black and orange heirlooms and changed up the herbs a bit but overall, didn’t deviate from the directions. I’ve made this three times now, it’s my new favorite for oven roasted tomato sauce.
Perfect Nick, glad you like this one!
This was a great recipe for my, first time grown, midnight roma heirloom tomatoes. I used fresh garlic since the cooking time is shorter for Romas. I emptied the entire concoction into a medium sized pot. Add spices and some red wine and a bit of water. Cooked it on low low heat for an hour and a half. It produced a luscious sauce. I did this with only 15 tomatoes which yielded about 3 cups of sauce. I will never ever blanch tomatoes again. Lovely.
Glad you enjoyed this!
A geat tomato sauce–we buy a bushel of san marizano tomatoes just for this. I use a sliced onion (instead of the diced shallot) and sometimes also add a sliced carrot (for sweetness if the tomatoes need it) to the cookie sheet. My go to herb is thyme (few sprigs of fresh) and once cooked, I freeze the sauce in flat takeout containers to make bricks (sometimes I blend it smooth, sometimes I leave it chunky). I like to then pop out my tomato bricks and vaccum seal them for longer term storage in the freezer. What a treat come Jan-Feb to pull out summer sauce with fresh gnocci!
I used this recipe to can 50 lbs of tomatoes yesterday and it is so good. When I woke up this morning I noticed that the olive oil had separated and risen to the top of the jars and now I am very nervous about botulism. I have never canned a recipe that required oil before. Should I freeze the sauce now?
Hi Joy- I’m not sure. Does anyone else know the answer to this?
I just made this Sauce and it’s wonderful! I did not add sugar but was quite generous with the olive oil.
I let the tomatoes cool, then processed in my blender.
To thicken the sauce I added a can of tomato paste.
Perfect!
Thank you Sylvia
Simple and delicious. I used the speckled roman tomatoes and blended with the skins after 20 minutes in the oven. Came out perfect, even on the thick side.
Perfect!
Simple but results in such depth of flavor! Made this with a batch of sauce tomatoes from my garden and was blown away. I served it with Smitten Kitchen’s spaghetti pie and that was quite a combo. It was almost better the next day! I look forward to making this again.
Thanks Amanda and Spaghetti Pie sounds awesome! I’ll have to look that up!
Love this easy but flavor-packed sauce. It paired well with so many dishes, including over spaghetti squash.
I made this as written a couple of times last summer with garden tomatoes gifted from neighbors. Jarred and froze for the winter.
Also followed the same recipe except put everything on the grill for a fire roasted version. Equally as good.
Sylvia, every one of the recipes written by you that I’ve tried has been great (and I’ve made several!) Can’t think of one that I needed to tweak (except for salt—going a bit lighter for personal tastes and health concerns). It’s so great to be able to trust a recipe as written and not have to scroll through a hundred comments to find out issues!
Thanks so much Gina- appreciate this! Love that you tried a grilled version!
I got a ton of tomatoes from my Dad and wanted to make sauce that was not going to take me all day and this recipe was PERFECT. My sauce came out awesome and I can’t want to eat it. I did add 2 hot peppers from my garden, which kicked up the heat.
Perfect Jackie! Love it!
Love this! I used 1/2 cherry tomatoes from my garden and 1/2 Roma tomatoes from the grocery store. I also added about 6 small sweet peppers when roasting because I had extra room on my baking tray. Once done and cooled a bit I dumped it all into a medium saucepan and used my immersion blender a bit to roughly sauce them. Delicious over stuffed zucchini with a little parmesan cheese sprinkled over top!
No sugar needed! These were super sweet thanks to the peppers!
Love it Joan!
This is delicious!! I added some red wine, some beef bouillon,parmesan and ground beef and made a meat sauce. So good!!!
Has anyone tried to use/eat them without mashing them on toast or biscuit? I have been looking for a receipe its half chopped cherry tomatoes with garlic and basil in Olive oil…
sounds good- I bet this would work. 😉
I think it would work as long as you strain out any excess liquid. The pasta really soaks it up and takes on the wonderful flavors, but toast or a biscuit might get soggy. You could also just cook the sauce down longer on the stove so that it’s a thicker consistency. Maybe “winter bruschetta”?
Excellent recipe, so easy and very tasty. This will definitely be my go to recipe for Marinara sause in future.