Homemade Instant Pot Tomato Sauce

Last updated on August 30, 2020 by Liza Hawkins

Make and store homemade tomato sauce a different, simpler and quicker way with your Instant Pot!

The 2018 tomato harvest proved to be a great one. As of September, I hadn’t seen an end in sight with either the tomatoes growing in my parents’ high tunnel or the plants I had growing in my container gardens.

The year before, the bounty lasted until October and I remember wondering if the last few would ripen before the first frost. (They did.)

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You can only eat so many tomatoes on salads and sandwiches, or chopped up and tossed on pasta or pizza, or in a marinara. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up with overflowing counters and crisper bins, as the tomato yield outpaces your ability to eat.

Enter: tomato sauce made with fresh tomatoes.

My mother cans tomatoes the old fashioned way, boiling them down, blending them, and then canning them so that they can sit beautifully on her pantry shelf for months and months and months.

I don’t have that kind of patience (except once when I made a slew of strawberry preserves and canned them … over a decade ago). Instead, I make and store tomato sauce a different and more simple way, and my Instant Pot comes to the rescue again with its pressure cooking awesomeness!

Whether it’s soup, chicken stock or tomato sauce, I love the fact that I can get the deep flavor and ease of all-day stove top or slow cooker food, in a fraction of the time with a pressure cooker.

Homemade Instant Pot Tomato Sauce

For this batch, I sliced the tops off ten to twelve heirloom tomatoes from the garden, ranging in size — some small, others huge. They were mostly yellow, which turns the sauce more of a deep golden orange color, rather than a deep red you see in many jarred sauces.

I sliced many of the tomatoes in half, but some of the larger ones I quartered since they were nearly the size of my head. The high tunnel produced some HUGE tomatoes.

Into the Instant Pot they went, with a cup of water and some onion powder, salt and pepper, and then cooked for forty-five minutes on the manual setting. Once time was up, I let the pressure release naturally for about twenty minutes, then I removed the lid and let them cool completely.

I spooned all the tomatoes into my food processor, gave them a *whirrrrrrr* on high for about thirty seconds, and then my lovely sauce was done!

Save one jarful for the fridge to use this week for farmhouse spaghetti, I put the rest of the sauce in zip top freezer bags (flattened) and threw them in my freezer chest to use later.

Done.

You could add other spices or herbs to your mix as you’re cooking the tomatoes or blending them up, but I wanted to keep this super basic so that it could be used for everything from pizza sauce to jambalaya, and I wouldn’t be married to the idea of Italian-only or other flavors.

Don’t have an Instant Pot?

Try homemade slow cooker tomato sauce instead!

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Yield: 3 cups

Homemade Instant Pot Tomato Sauce

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes

Make and store homemade tomato sauce a different, simpler and quicker way with your Instant Pot!

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Ingredients

• 10 to 20 tomatoes, various sizes
• 1 cup water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon onion powder

Instructions

1. Slice the tops off each tomato and discard.
2. Roughly chop the tomatoes, then toss them into the Instant Pot. Add the salt, pepper, onion powder and water. Give a stir, then lock the lid and cook for 45 minutes on manual pressure.
3. Once time's up, let the pressure release manually for 15-20 minutes, then remove the lid and let the tomatoes cool completely.
4. Once the tomatoes are completely cool, spoon them into a blender or food processor and puree until it's as smooth as you like.
5. Store the sauce flat in 1 or 2 cup portions in zip top freezer bags in the freezer.

Notes

The tomatoes can keep in the fridge for up to a week in a sealed container if you don't have time to blend or process them the same day.

Recommended Products

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  Instant Pot Lux 6-in-1 Electric Pressure Cooker, Sterilizer Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Steamer, Saute, and Warmer, 6 Quart, 12 One-Touch Programs
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  Hamilton Beach 12-Cup Stack & Snap Food Processor & Vegetable Chopper, Black (70725A)
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  J.A. Henckels International 31161-201 CLASSIC Chef's Knife, 8 Inch, Black

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

6

Serving Size:

1
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 79Total Fat: 1gSaturated Fat: 0gTrans Fat: 0gUnsaturated Fat: 0gCholesterol: 0mgSodium: 1080mgCarbohydrates: 17gFiber: 5gSugar: 11gProtein: 4g