Tomato Zucchini Experiment

Yesterday, I decided to do a mini barbeque session consisting of foiled roast, chicken breasts, campstyle potatoes, and a new tomato creation.

The USDA website has information on canning tomatoes and zucchini together but I want to take this a step further. I'm aiming for a smooth sauce that will be pressure canned. Essentially it is the same combination as the USDA recomendation but with seasons added and ingredients pureed to a smooth sauce.


Tomato Zucchini Experiment


The first step is getting the right flavour. For this experiment, I mixed chopped Lemon Boy and Ultra Sweet tomatoes with zucchini pieces in a 4:1 ratio. The ratio is only important if the sauce will be canned so that's why I used that ratio. Then I drizzled on a little olive oil and added a sprig of thyme, sprig of rosemary and small piece of basil. My intentions when turning this into a smooth sauce is to get the flavour of the herbs without leaving them in the sauce. I finished with a sprinkling of fresh ground pepper, sea salt and a couple of pats of butter. The mixture was roasted on the barbeque until the vegetables were tender. At that point I was going to remove the herb sprigs and puree the vegetables but my husband smelled the dish and decided that would go perfect over a chicken breast for a snack, as he put it. So I didn't get as far as the puree stage. According to him the mixture tasted great so it will be something I make again to help use up the copious amounts of zucchini and tomatoes from the garden.

Despite the best intentions of coming up with a smooth sauce yesterday, plans were foiled yet we discovered another way to use zucchini. I'm still mulling the smooth sauce idea. The butter would need to be left out for canning. Lemon juice would be added to each jar as they were filled. A very small amount of oil on the bottom of the pan to get the vegetable roasting would be ok depending on the amount of vegetables. I do my roasted tomato sauce this way for canning. The purpose for roasting instead of cooking on the stovetop is roasting imparts a rich, deep almost smokey flavour that you can't get on the stovetop. As far as the flavour combination, I think for the next experiment I will add in a few onion pieces to the vegetable mixture.