Yummy Toddler Foods: Tomato Sauce

I blogged about this sauce earlier on here. Tomato sauce freezes and keeps well. Using this sauce to prepare meals for Hannah cuts down my cooking time by half! For example, 1 hour cooking time for porridge versus 1/2 hour cooking time for minced meat in tomato sauce drizzled over soft white rice.

A mother recently shared with me her unsuccessful attempt at cooking tomato sauce for her baby and how dismayed she was after spending much time in the kitchen. Here’s my recipe (modified from another mother’s blog) for the tomato sauce with photos. This is dedicated to busy mothers who could use recipes that work the first round, hopefully. :)

Ingredients

• cherry tomatoes – 10-12, diced / medium tomatoes – 2, diced
• yellow capsicum – 1 medium, diced
• onion – 1 medium, diced
• garlic – 3 cloves, minced
• olive oil – 2 tbsps
• tap water – 300-400 ml
• tomato paste – 2 heaped tbsps

Note: In the photo above, I compensated the low capsicum volume with more tomatoes.

Seasonings

• balsamic vinegar – 2 tbsps
• white sugar – 1 tbsp
• salt – dash for taste
• ground black pepper – dash

Method

1)         In a small, deep saucepan, heat up olive oil and add garlic and onion to stir fry till fragrant and the onions look opaque (about 3-4 mins).

2)         Add tomato and capsicum and continue to stir fry until soft. It takes about 10 mins.

Note: The juices of tomato and capsicum help to simmer and soften the veggies. Stir and press the veggies down and let them simmer in their juices for 1-2 mins every now and then. Do this for 10 mins. If your veggies did not have sufficient juices, just add a little hot water to make up for it.

3)         Add tomato paste and stir well.

4)         Add tap water and bring it to boil.

This is an important step. To avoid over-diluting the sauce, DO NOT add all of the 300-400ml of tap water at one go. Rather, add water in small portions and stir in between to get a feel of the texture. (This is because the final volume of onion, capsicum and tomatoes vary every time the sauce is made and hence this affects the volume of tap water used to obtain the desired thickness of the sauce.) The sauce should be almost watery but with a certain viscosity.

If you are unsure when to stop adding water, my advice is to err on adding less than more. You could always dilute it later (with fresh milk, it tastes better) when you use it for preparing your child’s meal. After the tap water is added, bring the sauce to boil.

5)         Once boiling starts, add all the seasoning and stir after adding each seasoning. Allow sauce to simmer (light boiling) for about 5 minutes in medium heat.

6)          Remove the sauce pan from the heat and leave to cool to room temperature. Divide it into mini containers (I divide it into 100 ml portions) and place them to cool further in the refrigerator before freezing them. This recipe makes about 500 ml of tomato sauce.

Suggestions for using this sauce: either minced beef or minced threadfin (or any white fish) goes well with this sauce. See my previous blog.