It depends on the consistency you want. The masher will give you something between paste and sauce. If you want something smoother, you can put it through the blender in batches. If you can get a stick/hand blender, that will do a good job. I have the KitchenAid hand blender, and used that before I got a food strainer. In fact, it purees so well that I did some frozen sauce with the seeds and skin in and it is still totally smooth. The bonus is that you don't have to remove the hot tomatoes from the pot, just puree and then simmer them to the desired thickness.

It is just a handy kitchen gadget, I use it constantly!

Here is a link that might be useful: KithencAid Immersion Blender

Thanks for the reply. I have a nice blender, but am afraid i'll end up with tomato juice. lol I guess pulsing it would be ok, but i'll have to watch what I'm doing...

EG

You can have most anything shipped to your walmart store by asking the manager or ordering from walmart.com also most small hardware stores are likely to have one

What kind of sauce do you need they would make good crushed tomatoes as can be found on the nchfp website

You can use a food processor or a blender or even an electric mixer but either way you will still have to cook it down to sauce consistency. Even a Villaware/Roma tomato mill gives you juice that has to be cooked down. ;)

Check your local ACE hardware as they too carry Foley food mills and chinnois (what everyone used before the modern food mills were invented).

Enjoy your tomato sauce!

Dave

Thanks for the info, guys!

EG

The Oxo food mill also works well and may be available at a cooking store.

Or you can press them all through a seive and then cook them down, but that's really the hard way....

Annie

If the OP does make sauce using a potato masher, it will be "chunky", possibly even after a good long simmer. Would that change the processing times? I am curious because I like my tomato sauce to have more texture than is possible with a food mill, but I have been too conservative (nervous?) to mess around with any tomato processing times/directions from NCHFP.

Sharon

I think this recipe would be similar to what you would get with a potato masher I made it acording to directions and it looked like useful product and has high reviews but I havn't used any yet

Here is a link that might be useful: crushed tomatos no added liquid