Easy Tomato Sauce (for Asian cooking and stir fry recipes)

Many of popular Asian takeaway recipes such as Sweet & Sour dish or Manchurian requires the use of store bought tomato ketchup and sweet chili sauce as the recipe base. These are what you would normally find in the dishes either from Chinese takeaways or restaurants, as they are quick and cheap substitute for a good, made from scratch tomato sauce. So here I am going to show you a recipe on how to make a good and only few ingredients tomato sauce. I use this sauce to cook Sweet & Sour dish and Manchurian dish. Click here for my fantastic Broccoli Manchurian recipe. With this sauce, you can make your own favorite takeaway dish classics. You won’t have to worry again about high fructose corn syrup or MSG and preservatives in your food. And best of all, you can adjust the tangy sweetness, saltiness according to your taste.

Ingredients:

• Tomatoes -2 to 3
• Garlic -3 cloves, crushed
• Cinnamon stick – 1
• Cloves – 4 to 5 pieces
• Lemon juice or vinegar
• *Grape juice -1/2 cup (optional)
• Red chili powder
• Salt  (I’m using Himalayan)
• Sugar (any kind of sugar)
• Flour – 1/2 tsp
• Water

Method:

1. Boil tomatoes and garlic in about 2 to 3 cups of water. Once the tomatoes begin to soften and peeled, take it out from the pot and leave to cool. Save the garlic infused water used for boiling for later use.
2. Once the tomatoes are cool enough, peel off the skin and discard. Chop the tomatoes.
3. Now add in the chopped tomatoes, one clove of garlic from the water, and 3/4 cup of the remaining water into the blender. Blend until smooth.
4. Transfer the blended tomato juice into the pot and cook on low heat.
5. Add in some lemon juice or vinegar for tartness, along with *grape juice (if using), cloves, cinnamon stick, few pinches of salt and sugar. Here we want to mimic the taste of the commercialized, store-bought tomato sauce, so add in enough sugar to achieve that sweet, artificial flavor of store-bought ketchup. Feel free to use stevia, Splenda, even maple syrup if you wish to do so.
6. Add in about 1 tsp of red chili powder for natural color, and 1/2 a tsp of flour to thicken the sauce.
7. Stir until well cooked on low heat . Stop once it reaches right consistency and develop nice flavor.
8. Now your sauce is ready. Let it cool before transferring into a bottle or mason jar.

You can use this sauce as dipping sauce, or cooking oriental Sweet and Sour and Manchurian dishes. Shown below is the Broccoli Manchurian which I made with this sauce. Click here for recipe.

Broccoli Manchurian cooked using homemade Easy Tomato Sauce

Let me know if you have tried this recipe and how you enjoyed it!
Xoxo,

Z.