Pasta sauce goes watery

[jgm]

This week I made Alton Brown's tomato sauce. . .it starts out as fresh plum tomatoes, halved, seasoned, and baked for 2 1/2 hours, then put through a food mill, and finished off by being cooked with a little white wine. It's a really good sauce, even with out-of-season store bought tomatoes. After it came to temperature, it sat on a back burner on the "low" setting to keep warm.

After cooking the spaghetti, I drained it in a colander, then put it back in the cooking pot. It was dry enough that I was concerned about it sticking together.

So far, so good.

After ladling it onto the pasta, however, I ended up with really good tomato stuff on top, and the pasta was swimming in red water.

What's the deal? Is there any way to prevent this?

[Jason Perlow]

Yeah, don't rely entirely on fresh tomatoes as the basis for your sauce. Use a mixture of canned and fresh.

Another tip would be not to rely on Alton Brown for recipes that work properly.

Depending on the fresh tomatoes you have, the water content is going to differ. So 2 1/2 hours may not be enough time to cook out enough water in the sauce. Also, do you have a gas oven or an electric oven? That's going to make a difference in the amount of moisture that's retained.

There's a reason why you make marinara sauce in a SAUCEPAN or a POT, you know. Cause water, you know, evaporates.

Edited May 1, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[markabauman]

You might also want to try to combine the pasta & sauce differently- as a "condimento" like Mario or Lidia would show- ladle a small amount of sauce into a wide skillet or saute pan, add the pasta (cooked a bit al dente), then finish it off in the sauce. Pasta should absorb the excess water (you can also control by the addition of some of the pasta water).

[Jason Perlow]

Yeah, definitely saucing each portion in the pan improves the cohesiveness a bit.

[Jay Francis]

Ditto to Jason's comments. I make my sauce using a combination of (no salt added when available) one can tomato sauce, one can tomato puree, one can tomato paste, one onion diced and sauteed in oil then added to the tomato sauces. Pour sauces over a pork chop and simmer until thick and infused with the flavor of the pork chop. Add traditional Italian herbs and salt to taste.

Fresh tomato sauces are a whole diffrent animal.

[jsolomon]

Hmm, usually when I have things like that happen, I was rather cavalier with the draining of the pasta.

Dammit, Jason, what is your issue with tomatoes? You always seem to be picking on homemade sauces.

[chef koo]

as tomatoes cook and the fibres let go of the waterthe moisture will fall to the bottom of the pot. you'll notice this if you take a tomato chop it and simmer it in a pot. that's why alot of store bought tomato sauces have corn starch in them. it's to suspend the fiber and the mositure together. if you want to avoid this at home there's 3 things that i know of that you can do. one add cornstach yourself (shudders), twoyou can puree the sauce to absolute oblivion. this will make the fibers smaller and more easily suspendable in the water from the tomatos. and third is you can just reduce the sauce. cooking the pasta with the sauce in the pan will help also but a watery sauce will still leech out water after the pasta has been plated

[bluesman13]

well, I don't know if it's frowned upon here or not, but I find that by adding some tomato paste, it binds all the ingredients together and gives the sauce a silky shiny look.

hey, whats' wrong with Alton Brown? I like him.

:-)

[Jason Perlow]

Hmm, usually when I have things like that happen, I was rather cavalier with the draining of the pasta.

Dammit, Jason, what is your issue with tomatoes?  You always seem to be picking on homemade sauces.

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I got no problems with tomatoes. Chop them up and toss them with some fresh garlic , some basil and some olive oil for a few minutes, you got a great fresh sauce. But it's not going to produce a restaurant marinara sauce, no way. As Jay Francis says, different animal. You can't make a restaurant pasta sauce without either canned tomatoes or making the equivalent of canned tomatoes yourself without a -lot- of cooking down, and its a freaking waste of fresh, nice ripe tomatoes, really. And unless you have a restaurant kitchen you can't really duplicate the industrial canning process anyway. With nice fresh tomatoes, why the hell would you want to cook them all down into marinara?

Edited May 1, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[jgm]

With nice fresh tomatoes, why the hell would you want to cook them all down into marinara?

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We'll revisit this in September, and I'll let you know what I think of fresh San Marzanos cooked into marinara, versus canned SMs. Doing a comparison like that will be tough duty, but hey --anything for eGullet!

The two plants producing San Marzanos will be kept company by 12 other plants, so it's not like I'll be missing out on any BLTs or caprese salad, or just plain slabs-of-tomato-on-a-plate pigouts.

[Darcie B]

I encountered tomato/water separation while canning whole tomatoes a few years back. Here's a slightly more scientific explanation from various home canning websites (extension services in each state provide the same basic information).

What causes tomato juice to separate in the jar?

Liquid at the top and solids at the bottom indicates that the juice was made prior to heating (perhaps run through the steamer, sieve, or food mill raw). The enzyme that causes separation is activated by exposure to air and inactivated by heat. Leave tomatoes whole or in large chunks (do not chop). Heat before juicing to minimize separation.

Liquid at the bottom and solids at the top indicates too much preheating (more than 5 minutes). Pectin breaks down when overheated and separation results. If separation occurs, shake the jar before opening.

Here's one site I found with a procedure to avoid separation:

Procedure

Wash, remove stems, and trim off bruised or discolored portions. To prevent juice from separating, quickly cut about 1 pound of fruit into quarters and put directly into saucepan.

Heat immediately to boiling while crushing. Continue to slowly add and crush freshly cut tomato quarters to the boiling mixture. Make sure the mixture boils constantly and vigorously while you add the remaining tomatoes. Simmer 5 minutes after you add all the pieces.

If you are not concerned about juice separation, simply slice or quarter tomatoes into a large saucepan. Crush, heat, and simmer for 5 minutes before juicing.

Press both types of heated juice through a sieve or food mill to remove skins and seeds.

[Jason Perlow]

With nice fresh tomatoes, why the hell would you want to cook them all down into marinara?

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We'll revisit this in September, and I'll let you know what I think of fresh San Marzanos cooked into marinara, versus canned SMs. Doing a comparison like that will be tough duty, but hey --anything for eGullet!

The two plants producing San Marzanos will be kept company by 12 other plants, so it's not like I'll be missing out on any BLTs or caprese salad, or just plain slabs-of-tomato-on-a-plate pigouts.

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Obviously, if you are cooking San Marzano tomato varietals in the United States, you aren't going to have the same soil conditions as you would in the volcanic soil of San Marzano.

[jsolomon]

I have found that separated juice really has no discernable difference in flavor. So, to remedy separated juice, I shake the jar before serving.

[jgm]

[Obviously, if you are cooking San Marzano tomato varietals in the United States, you aren't going to have the same soil conditions as you would in the volcanic soil of San Marzano.

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Oh, of course not. And some tomato years will be better than others. . .lots of things will influence flavor. We could, theoretically, end up with better flavor than the genuine Italian tomatoes, for a year or two. We could also end up with watery crap that isn't worth picking, much less making into sauce. It depends on the year, the compost, and the mojo. Last year, for instance, was OK but not remarkable, except for the grape tomatoes. That one plant produced so much and grew so much, it almost got us in trouble with the local zoning authority. (OK, that's an exaggeration. But not much of one.) And they were incredibly flavorful. The previous year, the skins were tough and we threw away most of the tomatoes we picked from that plant.

And then there was '99, when the tornado moved the garage on top of the whole crop. Needless to say, the tomatoes weren't very good that year.

Come to think of it, one of my friends may have some Mount St. Helens volcanic ash left over from that glaze-making bender we went on in the early 90's. Since my hands won't throw clay anymore, that might just be a good use for that stuff.

Life's like a box of chocolates... and it's always more interesting when you grow tomatoes... because you never know what you're gonna get.

[Jason Perlow]

I wonder if burnt wood charcoal ash mixed in with regular soil would have any positive effects on tomato growing in the home garden. Not the same as volcanic ash, obviously.

You have to wonder why Hawaii never tried to make a cottage industry out of growing tomatoes. I guess Pineapples and coffee you can more easily make a killing on.

That and I guess because Vesuvius is the more pyroclastic-type volcano and the Hawaiian one's aren't , so the soil in Italy has more actual ash layers instead of hardened lava, I guess. Certainly Washington State though. Or the Yellowstone area.

Edited May 3, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[Parmhero]

With fresh tomatoes, I just reduce the sauce in the pan on medium high heat until the water evaporates and it reaches a thick consistency. It takes about 20 minutes. No thickeners required. You could also add tomato paste.

I make tomato sauce all the time--usually from canned tomato puree (prefer Redpack but have tried all kinds, Scalfani, etc.), plus canned plum tomatoes, and in the summer, fresh plum tomatoes with fresh basil. With fresh tomatoes, I used to blanch them first to remove the skins, but now I just rinse them, cut off the stem top and cut them in half or quarters. The skins come off while cooking and you can remove them later if you like.

The better the ingredients, the better the results.

[jsolomon]

I wonder if burnt wood charcoal ash mixed in with regular soil would have any positive effects on tomato growing in the home garden. Not the same as volcanic ash, obviously.

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I don't know, but the pigshit on my parents garden always produces lovely tomatoes.