"But actually it isn't all that difficult to know the approved ones as there are so few of them for spaghetti sauce since it is a low acid product. NCHFP/USDA publications, which includes the ones in So Easy to Preserve, and those in the Ball/Bernardin books. That's it. There aren't any in Small Batch Preserving." Well, it may not call itself spaghetti sauce, but there is "Chunky Basil Pasta Sauce" with fresh herbs and veges in Small Batch Preserving, and also "Roasted Vegetable Pasta Sauce" with both veges and fresh herbs in Small Batch Preserving, and also "Seasoned Tomato Sauce" with veges and fresh herbs that Small Batch Preserving suggests using in "pasta sauces, soups, stews, pizza, or casseroles." So, although the OP did leave the door open to reasonable questions about recipe safety, it is also good to take care in making broad statements about recipes which include such phrases as "there are no recipes which. . .", or "all approved recipes for (pasta sauce, salsa, whatever) MUST be. . ." since there may well be a safe recipe which allows such processing. For example: you CAN use fresh herbs in the approved NCHFP spaghetti sauce recipe, as this email from Elizabeth Andress states: Thank you for visiting the National Center for Home Food Preservation. > question -> Spaghetti Sauce without Meat: > 1. Can I eliminate the celery/peppers completely? > 2. Can I use fresh herbs or only dried? > 3. Can I add basil (fresh or dried)? > 4. Can I eliminate the sugar? For our particular procedures: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can_03/spaghetti_sauce.html You can leave out the celery and peppers completely, leaving everything else the same. (The mushrooms are already optional, also.) If you use fresh herbs, make sure they are very clean. I can only recommend using the equivalent volume measures, though, and that may not give you the flavor you desire. Eg., instead of 2 TBSP dried oregano, use 2 TBSP minced fresh oregano. I do not have enough information to know the upper limit on how much fresh to add, so that's all I can suggest without testing. (which we cannot do). You can use basil as a substitute for one of the other herbs (eg, you may not want the parsley with basil). Or, if you are leaving out the celery and peppers completely, you could add 2 to 4 TBSP of basil. Yes, you can eliminate the sugar in this recipe. The chopped celery and/or peppers and the sugar add a little moisture/liquid in many recipes. In this particular sauce, however, it is cooked down to thickened consistency anyway, so the amount of liquid that would be added by these ingredients would not be important as it might be in other types of food products/mixtures. Best wishes, Elizabeth Andress -------------------------------------- Elizabeth L. Andress, Ph.D. Project Director, National Center for HFP Professor and Extension Food Safety Specialist Department of Foods and Nutrition The University of Georgia 208 Hoke Smith Annex Athens, GA 30602-4356 Phone: (706) 542-3773 FAX: (706) 542-1979 -----------------------------------------------

I'm sorry but that is a cooking recipe, not a canning recipe. In most cases cooking recipes cannot be canned but they can be frozen with no problems. Since there has been no lab testing of this recipe there simply is no way to know what the pH is (although with so little added acid it would be quite high), what the density is, or what the pressure canning processing time would have to be. Plain tomato sauce can be turned into all sorts of things after opening and the more things you add to it before canning the more its uses are limited. But you could always add a little dry Italian seasoning to it if you wanted. You can always safely add dry herbs and seasonings (onions, basil, oregano, etc.) as they don't affect the pH like fresh herbs and seasonings would. The Ball Blue Book offers several different flavored tomato sauces to choose from. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Link to the recipe

Lou, Yup, that's it. On spaghetti sauce cooking day grandma's menu was: BREAKFAST=eggs poached in sauce LUNCH=when all the guys came home for lunch, DGM scooped out enough sauce to make a pot of pasta e fagioli DINNER=spaghetti with sauce and various meats baked in sauce SUNDAY=lasagna made with leftover sauce I never knew it to vary from this routine and I pretty much use the same schedule--except the eggs (I don't do eggs!). The sauce was an all day production.

I used to make my own until I found this. It is great. Tastes good. No weird ingredients. https://www.raos.com/product/pizza-sauce/ I get it at Publix or Walmart.