Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce Recipe (2024)

Why It Works

Great sauce starts with great ingredients. Use the best canned whole peeled tomatoes you can find, preferably San Marzano D.O.P. tomatoes.
A mixture of butter and olive oil gives the sauce extra richness while mellowing out the stronger flavors.
A whole onion and a carrot added to the sauce while it simmers add natural sweetness, without overwhelming the sauce with extra flavors or being cloying.
The pressure cooker cooks the sauce hot enough to trigger the Maillard reaction, creating complex, browned flavors in record time.
Fish sauce, if you'd like to use it, adds rich, intensely savory flavor (and no, it won't make the sauce taste fishy).
Saving some of the tomatoes to stir in at the end gives the sauce a layer of freshness.

We generally associate the Maillard reaction with extra-high temperatures: smoking-hot pans or grills to brown our steaks, or hot ovens to give us dark bread crusts. But the reaction can actually take place at much lower temperatures; it just happens to occur at a slightly slower pace.

I take advantage of this fact when making a big batch of myslow-cooked tomato sauce, which spends about six hours in a 300°F (150°C) oven. Even though the sauce never comes close to the temperatures you'd need for browning steak or bread, it still darkens significantly in color over its long cooking time. This deepening of color corresponds to an equal deepening of flavor. It isn't a bright, fresh tomato sauce. It's a rich, complex sauce that tastes like it cooked all day precisely because itdid.

But what if I don't have all day to cook my tomato sauce? What if it's six o'clock on a Wednesday night and I want to be in my pajamas and in bed, with a full belly and a content smile on my face, by eight?

Well, Icouldturn toDaniel's 40-minute red sauce. It's a great recipe that delivers some of the depth of a slow-cooked sauce by using tomato paste in the flavor base. But, given that I wisely foresaw this exact circ*mstance and got myselfa pressure cooker to deal with it, I've got a better option on the counter.

Because a pressure cooker cooks hotter than a simmering pot—250°F (121°C) at high pressure, as opposed to 212°F (100°C) for standard boiling—all kinds of interesting things take place inside its hermetically sealed walls. One of those is browning. We don't typically associate browning with moist cooking methods, like simmering, boiling, or steaming, but a pressure cooker allows liquids to get hot enough to actually start undergoing the Maillard reaction.

In just 45 minutes of cooking at high pressure, you can develop many of the deep flavors you associate with all-day tomato sauces. Good news for a weeknight cook.

You may be saying to yourself,Wait a minute—the sauce in the oven cooked at 300°F for six hours, and you're only cooking at 250°F for 45 minutes. Lower temperatureandless time. What gives?

The answer is that in the oven, theairtemperature is 300°F, but that doesn't mean that the temperature of thesauceis actually 300°F. Indeed, you'll find that, other than on the very surface, most of the sauce doesn't ever heat up beyond around 200°F or so. The vast majority of the darkening that occurs in an oven occurs only at the surface of the sauce, which means you need a decent amount of time to darken it enough to flavor the whole batch.

A pressure cooker, on the other hand, heats itsentire contentsto 250°F. That's the sauce at the top, the bottom, and everything in between. Browning occurs more evenly, as well as over a greater volume, so it takes less time overall.

Remember, liquids don't really reduce in a pressure cooker, which means that the final flavor of a pressure-cooked sauce is not quite the same as that of an oven-cooked sauce. But, unless you're doing a direct, side-by-side comparison, it's not something you or your dinner companions are likely to notice.

That's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to be able to eat this stuff any day of the week.

And remember: The greatest sauce in the world ain't worth a damn if youdon't sauce that pasta the right way!

October 2016

Recipe Details

Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce Recipe

Prep5 mins

Cook70 mins

Active20 mins

Total75 mins

Serves12 servings

Makes1 1/2 quarts

Ingredients

Directions

Place tomatoes in a large bowl. Using your hands, crush tomatoes by squeezing them through your fingers until pieces no larger than 1/2 inch remain. Transfer 1 cup (240ml) of crushed tomatoes to a sealed container and reserve in the refrigerator until step 3.
Heat olive oil and butter over medium heat in a pressure cooker until butter is melted. Add garlic and cook, stirring, until softened and fragrant but not browned, about 2 minutes. Add pepper flakes and oregano and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add tomatoes, carrot, onion, and basil and stir to combine. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Seal pressure cooker and bring to high pressure. Cook for 45 minutes, then release pressure and open lid.
Using tongs, discard onion halves, carrot, and basil. Add reserved tomatoes to sauce and stir to combine. Add fish sauce, if using. Season generously with salt and pepper and stir in minced herbs, along with additional olive oil as desired. Serve immediately, or allow to cool at room temperature, transfer to airtight containers, and refrigerate for up to 1 week. Sauce can also be frozen in sealed containers for up to 6 months. To reheat, warm very gently in a saucepan with 1/2 cup (120ml) water, stirring until it all melts and heats through.

Notes

Use the best tomatoes you can find. D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy are readily available and a guarantee of quality, though any high-quality domestic or imported canned tomato will work. Make sure that the San Marzano tomatoes you buy are labeled "D.O.P.," not just "San Marzano–style."

Special Equipment

Electric or stovetop pressure cooker

The Right Way to Sauce Pasta

Tomato Sauces
Italian
Pressure Cooker
Tomato

Pressure Cooker Tomato Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How long does it take to cook tomatoes in a pressure cooker? ›

Add tomatoes and carrots to pot and give everything a good stir. No need to add water, the tomatoes make plenty of their own liquid during cooking. Lock lid and set Instant Pot to manual/pressure cook for 20 minutes.

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How to can tomato sauce with a pressure cooker? ›

Pressure Canning Instructions

add 2-3 inches of water to the pressure canner.
Place clean jars in the pressure canner and heat to 140-180F to pre-heat the jars so they don't bust when the hot sauce is added.
use a funnel and ladle to transfer the sauce into clean, hot jars.
remove air bubbles with a silicon utensil.

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Get More Info ›

Do sauces reduce in a pressure cooker? ›

Remember, liquids don't really reduce in a pressure cooker, which means that the final flavor of a pressure-cooked sauce is not quite the same as that of an oven-cooked sauce. But, unless you're doing a direct, side-by-side comparison, it's not something you or your dinner companions are likely to notice.

What are the disadvantages of a pressure cooker? ›

Because pressure cooking is an enclosed form of cooking, there is no contact with air. Therefore, some nutritionists argue that the ingredients may remain uncooked from within which can hamper your digestion on being consumed. Almost all cooking methods, including pressure cooking, have their own pros and cons.

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Why do you peel tomatoes for sauce? ›

Why would you peel tomatoes? The tomato skin is a different texture from the tomato flesh, and will remain so in sauces and purées—you'll get tiny chunks of skin instead of an uniformly smooth mixture. Moreover, the tomato skin is heavy in a kind of nutrient called flavonols, which impart a bitter flavor.

Why did my can of tomato sauce pop? ›

Why do canned tomatoes or tomato juice sometimes explode in the pantry? Spoilage and improper preparation can cause reactions in tomato products. Tomatoes are Naturally rather acidic and as such can weaken metal and seals. As they do so the produce gasses that build in pressure.

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Is it safe to steam can tomato sauce? ›

Tomatoes can be safely processed in a boiling-water canner, steam canner or pressure canner. The atmospheric steam canner is fairly new to home canning. It uses only 2 quarts of water (compared to 16 quarts, or more, in a boiling-water canner). Because less water is heated, processing can start more quickly.

Should you pressure cook tomatoes? ›

Tomatoes and tomato products have traditionally been canned in a boiling water bath (212 °F). However, recent research shows that for some products, pressure canning will result in a high-quality and more nutritious product. Directions for canning a variety of tomato products are given below.

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How long do you pressure cook diced tomatoes? ›

According to Putting Foods By, 25th ed. (1982), you can fill tomato jars with just hot boiled tomato juice rather than requiring additional acid, and then pressure-can them: 10lbs pressure / 40 minutes for skinned whole tomatoes. 10lbs pressure / 15 minutes for sliced or diced tomatoes.