Pressure Cooker Tomato-Basil Sauce
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** This post is sponsored by Kuhn Rikon, whose products I have loved for years. Thank you for the support.**
In past years, all of our home-grown tomatoes arrive at once, often in October, long after I’ve satisfied my morning-, noon-, and night-tomato craving with something sweet and beefy from the farmers’ market.
This year, thanks to my husband, who nurtured the Cherokee Purple seedlings in our basement in mid April and lovingly transplanted them to our garden after Memorial Day, we’ve been lucky to have a steady supply for weeks, allowing us to live on BLTs, cream cheese-and-tomato topped bagels, and tomato-and-basil salads.
But the tomatoes keep coming. Every day a dozen or so, threatening to burst at the seams at any moment, get pulled from the vine and huddled with the dozen or so similarly delicate spheres blanketing our counter. Time to make sauce.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been making a tomato-basil sauce in a new gadget: the DUROMATIC® Pressure Cooker from the Christopher Kimball for Kuhn Rikon collection, a stovetop pressure cooker designed with Milk Street’s Christopher Kimball. For its energy- and time-saving capabilities, the Duromatic, Christopher says, is a “powerhouse,” and he particularly likes using it for risottos, soups and one-pot dishes.
As speed more and more is a particularly compelling feature for me, I’ve been loving how quickly my sauces, soups, and beans have been cooking in the Duromatic and how quickly—always within three to four minutes—it reaches full pressure. Also, for me, because it’s a stovetop device, the Duromatic feels more intuitive than electric pressure cookers I’ve used.
In next week’s post, I’ll share more about the Duromatic along with another pressure-cooked recipe and a chance to win a Duromatic. But today we’re going to tackle the tomato glut.
This recipe, an adaptation of Marcella Hazan’s famous sauce, start to finish takes 30 minutes and tastes so fresh and summery. Thus far I’ve used the sauce to make no-fuss eggplant parmesan and, as pictured here, another summer favorite: eggplant involtini. I have several quarts of the sauce frozen on hand and have no doubt will be adding to the supply all fall as this sauce feels so effortless to make.
Here’s the basic process: place coarsely chopped tomatoes, onions, salt, and butter into the pressure cooker, close the lid, and place over high heat; bring to pressure, cook for 5 minutes, let release naturally, (a 15-minute affair), purée with some basil, then simmer to reach desired consistency (5 minutes or so). That’s it! Find the full recipe along with the involtini recipe below.
Looking forward to sharing more about the Duromatic next week. Question: Do you use a stovetop pressure cooker? If so, what’s your favorite use for it?
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Cherokee Purples: my favorite. For this sauce, you can use any tomatoes you are growing or loving at the moment. Here’s a visual how-to guide to making this sauce:
Chop up 4.5 to 5 pounds of tomatoes.
Slice up to 2 onions.
Add tomatoes to pressure cooker.
Add onions, 2 teaspoons salt, and a stick of butter.
Close the lid, bring the pot up to pressure over high heat.
Shortly after you see two red lines…
… you’ll hear a loud hissing sound, which will be your signal to turn the heat down to low, which will cause the hissing to stop and the valve to drop down to reveal a single red line. Cook at this level for five minutes; then turn off the heat and let the valve release naturally, which will take about 15 minutes.
Remove the lid.
Purée with an immersion blend (or food processor or traditional blender).
Add basil, if you wish, and purée again.
Return pan to stovetop and simmer further to reach desired consistency.
To make the involtini, find an eggplant or two.
Slice it lengthwise and roast it (see recipe for details) till golden.
Whisk fresh ricotta with lemon zest and salt, and drop a few spoonfuls at one end of each roasted eggplant slice.
Roll into a coil and place seam side down.
Ladle a thin layer of sauce into a gratin dish.
Nestle your eggplant rolls in the sauce, brush with cream or half-and-half, and bake for another 25 minutes.
Shave some Parmigiano Reggiano over top (using your favorite peeler):
Pressure Cooker Tomato-Basil Sauce
- Total Time: 40 minutes
- Yield: 2 quarts
Description
Marcella Hazan’s famous sauce takes a spin in the Duromatic® Pressure Cooker, a new stovetop pressure cooker made by Kuhn Rikon and designed by Christopher Kimball of Milk Street.
Ingredients
- 4.5 to 5 pounds tomatoes, roughly chopped
- 2 large onions, thinly sliced
- 2 teaspoon kosher salt
- 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
- bunch basil, optional
- sea salt, such as Maldon, for finishing
Instructions
- Place the tomatoes, onions, kosher salt, and butter into your stovetop pressure cooker. Close the lid. Turn the heat to high. When the two red lines of the valve are visible, reduce heat to low—the valve should drop to reveal only 1 line—and cook for 5 minutes. Turn heat off. Let valve release naturally, which should take between 15-20 minutes.
- Remove lid. Purée, with the basil if using, until smooth—I use an immersion blender for this; if you don’t have one, use a traditional blender or a food processor. Sauce will be thin. Return pan to burner and simmer over low or medium heat until sauce is desired consistency. Note: keep in mind, when you use sauce in something like eggplant involtini or eggplant parmesan, it will reduce further as it cooks. More and more I keep the sauce on the thin side and reduce it as needed. Also, this recipe could easily be turned into soup by simmering it down to the desired consistency and adding a splash of cream.
- Store in quart containers in the fridge for up to a week; freeze for 3 to 6 months.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 30 minutes
This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure policy.
24 Comments on “Pressure Cooker Tomato-Basil Sauce”
Have you canned the sauce? How does it hold up to that process? The famous sauce is usually a recipe I use in the winter with canned tomatoes. For summer sauce I roast thick slices of tomatoes with olive oil and salt until they are concentrated and put them through the medium blade of the food mill. Then add slices of garlic and slivered basil to the jars and process. I also make a tomato and roasted vegetable soup that I can. It uses up large quantities of tomatoes, plus my glut of peppers. The base soup can have pasta, meatballs or sausage, veggies, etc added when the jar is opened.
Hi Jane! Your sauces sound delicious. I have not tried canning, but I imagine they would do very well canned. I freeze everything in quart containers bc it’s easy/fast, but I would love to get into canning one day. Would love to have jars of this sauce in the pantry 🙂
Nice! I can’t wait to be around good tomatoes again. I la-la-love Christopher Kimball’s line and Milk Street magazine. I make a ton of their recipes. This looks wonderful Ali.
I do, too, Dana! I am such a fan of Milk Street and Christopher Kimball. Love the podcast, too. xo
I love, love, love my KuhnRikon pressure cooker. It has been a lifesaver so many times when dinner needed to be on the table quickly for very hangry kids (and parents). I use it for almost everything! Last week it was green beans. I know some people will say that you should cook the very slowly with onions and herbs but I prefer the pressure cooker method because it’s so easy peasy. Same for risotto!
So happy to hear this Honeybee! I’ve been cooking black beans in it without soaking them, and they have been coming out so well! I’m excited to test it out with other recipes … risotto is high on my list.
Hello! I’ve made the involtino several times and it’s seriously delish (as are all your recipes).
Can I make this sauce in my instant pot?
Yay! Hi Anne! You definitely can use your Instant Pot for the sauce, but you’ll probably have to play around with the timing a bit, but know that it’s very forgiving … if when you open the lid and purée the sauce you find the texture to be too thin, just simmer it—I do it at a pretty fast simmer—for 5 minutes or until the sauce thickens to your liking.
Thanks!!!! Making it this week!
I made your eggplant recipe last night for friends and it was a huge success. The addition of the lemon rind brought a fresh flavor to the ricotta that was so delicious. Baking the eggplants on the parchment enhanced their roasted flavors and kept them light. I added 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan and 1 t. chopped parsley and basil to the ricotta lemon mix. I added a little sick of Mozzarella on top of the eggplant before I rolled them up. Thank you so much for this recipe. I always look forward to seeing what you are making next!
So great to hear all of this Chris! Your additions to the ricotta mix sound so lovely, and I bet the parmesan helps prevent it from oozing all over the place. Love the addition of mozzarella, too. Yum! Thanks for the kind words 🙂
I was convinced eggplant was the one vegetable I just didn’t like until I saw this recipe. The pictures coaxed me to try it out and I am so pleased I did. I had been making Hazan’s tomato sauce for years and pairing it with the involtini was delicious. I’ve saved this recipe to use again and again.
I have a a glut of tomatoes and quite a few eggplant, soI bought some ricotta. While I have a pressure cooker, I chose to use my roasted tomato sauce (slice,salt,roast,run through food mill, add EVOO and basil). These are good! I like it even better than my usual eggplant gratin (sauce, stacked roast eggplant slices with roasted pepper slices, roasted garlic cloves and kalamata olives slid in between, cover, bake, uncover and top with meaty cheese)
Making your eggplant involltini tonight fo the 2nd time! This occasion is for our best friends who are coming for dinner. I also made the sauce with the Purple Cherokees in my BRAND NEW Milk Street Kuhk Rikon pressure cooker. Matchy, matchy! LOL.
I can’t wait to knock our friends’ socks off with this delicious and simple recipe. We love it, Alexandra!
WOOHOO!!! Go Lu Go!! There is no one I would rather be matchy matchy with 🙂 🙂 🙂 Hope your friends loved the involtini. It’s one of my favorites this time of year. Sending lots of love!!
great recipe, thank you, really appreciate the very detailed step by step picture walk through! I really prefer pictures to recipe videos too
Good to know, Sabrina!
This looks sooooo good. Now that tomato season is just about over, could I make the sauce with good canned tomatoes? Can’t wait to make this!!
I ate this a week ago at a resto I went to and it already tasted amazing so it urged me to try it at home! Just by seeing this made me so happy, Alexandra! The process and the ingredients are exactly what I needed in doing this! Love to cook it at home and serve this to my family soon!
So happy to hear this, Elizabeth!!
Could I make this with canned tomatoes? If so, what size can would you suggest?
Thanks!!
I can’t say because I’ve never tried! BUT my theory is that everything is worth a shot. Go for it. If you’re going through the effort, I would use two 28-oz cans of peeled san marzano tomatoes. You may have to simmer it down a bit to thicken it up.
What do you think would be the cook time with the pressure cooker tomato sauce in an instapot ? Thanks
I’m guessing here, but maybe 5 minutes? With a 15-minute natural release?