Harvesting San Marzanos & Simmering Down Into Something Real

There’s nothing quite like harvesting your own San Marzano tomatoes. These little red beauties are the sauce-makers’ gold, and mine have been ripening like clockwork in the Oklahoma sun. I head out early with a bowl in hand and hopes high that the squirrels haven’t hosted another midnight snack. Thankfully, this haul was safe and mine.

Once inside, I give them a quick blanch, slip off those skins, and do my best to get the seeds out. Keyword: best. If you’ve ever processed San Marzanos, you know—they’ve got roughly 7 zillion seeds. I get most, but a few always sneak by. I just call them texture.

Then comes the good stuff. I start with a big splash of olive oil and two onions diced fine, cooking them low and slow until they’re soft and golden. I follow that with a whole head of garlic—because garlic is a love language—and sauté it until it smells like something holy.

Then... the wine. A good dry red, splashed in and slowly reduced until it’s thick and moody. This is the moment the sauce goes from garden variety to full-on soul food. The wine deepens everything and gives it that slow-cooked-from-scratch richness you can’t fake.

Once it’s reduced, I stir in the tomatoes and let them break down gently over the next few hours. I add salt, a pinch of sugar to balance the acid, and a handful of basil leaves if I’ve got some on hand.

By the end of the day, I’ve got a pot of marinara that tastes like a little bit of heaven and a whole lot of home. I freeze what I don’t use (or at least pretend I will), maybe share a jar, but most of it ends up poured over noodles, spooned onto sourdough, or eaten straight from the pot.

This is what it’s all about—taking what the earth gave you and turning it into something warm, rich, and real.