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Canning spaghetti sauce without meat turns an otherwise ordinary pasta night into a homemade feast, and it puts a ready-to-go dinner base on your pantry shelf for whenever you need it. When you put up your own, you get to season it to your family’s taste, so every jar comes out the way you like it.
Table of Contents
- Notes from My Kitchen
- Quick Look at the Recipe
- Choosing Tomatoes for Spaghetti Sauce
- Ingredients for Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
- Spaghetti Sauce Canning Variations
- How to Make Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
- Canning Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
- Altitude Adjustments
- Serving Ideas for Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
- Yield Notes
- Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat FAQs
- Tips for Success
- Tomato Sauce Recipes
- Canning Spaghetti Sauce (Basic Recipe without Meat)
- Pressure Canning Recipes
This recipe has been reviewed for safety and accuracy by a Master Food Preserver certified through the University of Cornell Cooperative Extension.
This is a tested recipe from the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and it is a pressure canning recipe rather than a water bath one. Tomatoes seem acidic, but they sit right on the borderline for canning, and once you add the onions, peppers, and mushrooms that make this sauce hearty, the batch drops into low-acid territory. Since the recipe also skips any added acid (no lemon juice, vinegar, or wine), it tastes less sharp than many jarred sauces, but it does mean a pressure canner, not a water bath, is what makes it safe to put up.
There are a lot of ways to put up tomato sauce, and I keep a full list of every tested pasta sauce canning recipe, which runs to more than 30 different recipes. Of those, 19 are water bath canning recipes, and they get there either by adding more acidity (wine, balsamic, or lemon juice) or by leaving out the low-acid vegetables. This version goes the other direction, keeping the vegetables and skipping the acid, so it stays in the pressure canner.
If you would rather have the meat already in the jar, I also have a tested recipe for canning spaghetti sauce with meat, which is processed quite a bit longer to account for it.
If you are new to this, it is worth reading my beginner’s guide to pressure canning before you start.
Notes from My Kitchen
Tomato season around here always gives us more than we can eat fresh, and a plain tomato sauce is where a lot of those extra bushels end up. I tend to make this meatless version because it keeps my options open. Some jars become a quick weeknight marinara just as they are, and others get a pound of browned sausage stirred in for a Sunday dinner, all from the same shelf.
It is a project, I will not pretend otherwise. Plan on an afternoon at the stove and a kitchen that smells like garlic and oregano for hours. But a pantry full of homemade sauce makes the busy nights in fall and winter so much easier, and once you have done it the first time, you will keep finding reasons to do it again.
Quick Look at the Recipe
- Recipe Name: Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
- Recipe Type: Pasta Sauce (Tomato Sauce)
- Canning Method: Pressure Canning
- Prep Time: About 45 minutes
- Cook Time: About 1 to 1 1/2 hours
- Canning Time: Pints 20 minutes, Quarts 25 minutes
- Yield: About 9 pints (4 to 5 quarts)
- Jar Sizes: Pints and Quarts
- Headspace: 1 inch
- Ingredients Overview: Tomatoes, Onions, Peppers or Celery, Mushrooms, Garlic and Spices
- Safe Canning Recipe Source: National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP)
- Difficulty: Moderate. Be sure you have a food mill or food strainer on hand.
- Similar Recipes: Canning spaghetti sauce without meat works much like other pressure canned tomato sauces, including spaghetti sauce with meat and the wider list of tested pasta sauce canning recipes. If you like keeping the pantry stocked with dinners, try other meal in a jar canning recipes like white chicken chili or Cajun red beans and sausage.
Choosing Tomatoes for Spaghetti Sauce
You can use any kind of tomato you like for this sauce, but paste tomatoes such as Roma or San Marzano tend to work well and save you time. They have more flesh and less juice than a slicing tomato, so the sauce cooks down faster and usually does not need extra thickening after canning. If you grow your own and know you want to put up sauce, paste varieties are the ones to plant.
That said, a glut of slicing or beefsteak tomatoes will still make a fine sauce. They simply carry more water, so you will spend longer at the stove simmering the batch down. Whatever you grow or find at the farm stand will work, as long as the tomatoes are ripe, sound, and free of soft spots or bad bruising.
Ingredients for Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
The ingredient list here is short, and the exact amounts are in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. What matters most for safety is the ratio of vegetables to tomatoes, so it helps to understand what each part is doing before you start swapping things around.
- Tomatoes: The base of the whole sauce, and the reason you are firing up the pressure canner. Any ripe tomato works, though paste types give the thickest result with the least simmering.
- Onions, Peppers, or Celery: These build the savory backbone of the sauce, but they are also low-acid vegetables, which is what puts this recipe in the pressure canner. Their amounts are set for safety, so they can be cut back but not increased.
- Mushrooms: Optional, and they add body and a deeper, meatier flavor. Use fresh sliced mushrooms rather than dried.
- Garlic and Dried Herbs: Garlic, oregano, parsley, salt, and black pepper carry the flavor, and the seasonings are the one place you have real freedom to adjust things to suit your family.
- Oil and Brown Sugar: A little oil is for sauteing the vegetables, and a touch of brown sugar rounds out the acidity of the tomatoes. The sugar is there for taste and can be left out if you prefer.
The one rule you cannot bend is the proportion of low-acid vegetables. You can leave out the mushrooms, peppers, onions, or celery, or use less, but never more, since that shifts the acidity of the batch and makes it unsafe at this processing time. For the same reason, leave the meat out and stir it in at serving instead. There is more room to adjust than that makes it sound, though, and I cover the safe swaps just below.
Spaghetti Sauce Canning Variations
The most common question I’m asked about changing up sauce recipes is around the peppers and onions. A surprising number of people are allergic or intolerant to onions, and want options.
They can be completely omitted without issue, but you can also substitute an equal amount of diced peppers in place of the onions (or vice versa if you don’t like peppers). Just keep the total volume the same.
This change, and others, are covered in my article on safe changes to canning recipes.
If you’d like to completely design your own sauce recipe, I’d recommend following the extension tested protocol for “hearty soups” which I use when designing my meal in a jar canning recipes. It allows you to create a hearty mixture of vegetables (rather than a brothy one), and the guidelines work well for creating your own sauce.
Keep in mind, the canning times in that guidance are much longer (75 and 90 minutes) because of the variation in ingredients. If you want the shorter time, you’ll have to stick to this specifically tested recipe.
How to Make Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
The method is simple in concept. You peel and seed the tomatoes, cook them into a smooth sauce, saute the vegetables, simmer everything together until it is thick, and pack it hot into jars. The part that takes patience is the simmer, since the batch needs to reduce by about half before it is ready for the canner.
Prepare the Tomatoes
Begin by washing the tomatoes. Dip them in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, until the skins split and pucker, then move them straight into cold water or a bowl of ice and slip off the skins. Remove the cores and quarter the tomatoes.
If you want more detail on this part, I have a full guide to peeling tomatoes for canning that walks through the whole process step by step.
Once the tomatoes are peeled and quartered, boil them uncovered for 20 minutes in a large saucepan. This softens them and drives off some of the water before you mill them.
Run the cooked tomatoes through a sieve or food mill to remove the seeds and make a smooth sauce. I usually use the food mill attachment on my KitchenAid mixer, but a small hand crank food mill, a manual countertop food strainer, and a chinois sieve all work about as well.
If you would rather have a chunkier sauce, squeeze the seeds out by hand and dice the tomatoes instead of milling. Do not do that with more than about half of them, though, or you lose the smooth sauce that carries the chunks and the texture comes out too thick and dry.
And if you do not own a food mill at all, you can seed the tomatoes and run them through a food processor or blender, work through them with an immersion blender, or dice them as finely as you can by hand. Any of these will get you there.
Cook the Sauce
Saute the onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic in a little oil until tender. Combine them with the milled tomatoes, then stir in the herbs, salt, pepper, and sugar. Bring everything up to a boil, then drop it to a simmer and cook uncovered until the sauce is thick enough to serve.
The volume will drop as it cooks, and that is exactly what you want. The batch should reduce to about half of where it started. Stir it often as it simmers so it does not scorch or stick to the bottom of the pot, especially toward the end as it thickens.
Pack the Jars
While the sauce simmers, prepare your pressure canner along with your jars and lids. For most canners that means 2 to 3 inches of water in the bottom along with the trivet, brought up to a simmer at around 180 degrees for this hot pack recipe.
Once the sauce is ready, ladle it hot into clean, hot jars, leaving 1 inch of headspace. Remove any air bubbles and adjust the headspace if needed, then wipe the rims with a dampened clean paper towel to remove any sauce. Add the lids and bands, and tighten the bands until they are fingertip tight.
Canning Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
This is a hot pack recipe, processed in a pressure canner, and the steps are the same whether you are filling pints or quarts. If you can quarts, you may end up with a little extra sauce that does not fill a final jar, which is a fine excuse for pasta that night.
To can, load the filled jars into your prepared pressure canner. Turn the heat to high and let the canner vent a steady stream of steam for 10 full minutes before you add the weight and bring it up to pressure. This venting step is not optional with pressure canning, so do not skip it.
Process pints for 20 minutes or quarts for 25 minutes at 11 pounds pressure in a dial gauge canner, or 10 pounds in a weighted gauge canner if you are below 1,000 feet in elevation, adjusting the pressure for your altitude as shown below.
When the time is up, turn off the heat and let the canner depressurize on its own. Never force cool it. Once it has returned to zero, remove the jars and let them cool undisturbed for 12 hours, then check the seals before storing.
Altitude Adjustments
With pressure canning, the processing times stay the same at higher altitudes, but the pressures change. Here are the altitude adjustments for pressure canning spaghetti sauce without meat:
For dial gauge pressure canners:
- 0 to 2,000 feet: 11 lbs pressure
- 2,001 to 4,000 feet: 12 lbs pressure
- 4,001 to 6,000 feet: 13 lbs pressure
- 6,001 to 8,000 feet: 14 lbs pressure
For weighted gauge pressure canners:
- 0 to 1,000 feet: 10 lbs pressure
- Above 1,000 feet: 15 lbs pressure
Serving Ideas for Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat
This sauce is simple to serve. Pour a jar into a pot, heat it through, and it is ready for a plate of pasta or whatever else you have in mind.
If you want a meat sauce, brown about half a pound of ground beef or sausage per pint and stir it in as the sauce heats. You can add extra vegetables too, or simmer it down a little if it came out thinner than you like. Anything you cannot safely can, like meat, dairy, or a flour or cornstarch thickener, goes in right here at the end.
From there, spoon it over whatever you like. It is at home on spaghetti or any other pasta, but it also makes a quick base for baked ziti, a topping for polenta, or the sauce layer in a weeknight lasagna. A handful of fresh herbs or a little grated cheese at the table never hurts.
Yield Notes
A full batch starts from about 30 pounds of tomatoes and yields roughly 9 pints, which is about 4 to 5 quarts. The exact count depends a lot on your tomatoes, since watery varieties cook down further and leave you with less finished sauce, so plan for the lower end if yours are on the juicy side.
The recipe scales cleanly up or down as long as you hold the vegetable proportions steady, so halving or doubling it is no problem. Whatever size batch you make, run at least the pressure canner minimum of 2 quarts or 4 pints in a load, since a canner is not designed to process fewer jars than that safely.
Before you head to the kitchen, here are a few of the questions that come up most often about canning this sauce.
Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat FAQs
No. This sauce contains low-acid onions, peppers, and mushrooms, so it is not safe for water bath canning. You need to use a pressure canner, since a water bath canner cannot reach a safe temperature for these low-acid vegetables.
No. Adding meat changes the density and the safe processing time. The tested spaghetti sauce with meat is processed much longer, 60 minutes for pints and 70 for quarts, compared to 20 and 25 here, so brown your meat and stir it in when you reheat a jar to serve instead.
No. Flour, cornstarch, and other thickeners are too dense to let heat move through the jar safely, so they are never added before canning. Can the sauce as is, then thicken it on the stove when you reheat it to serve.
Properly processed and sealed jars keep for about 12 to 18 months in a cool, dark place, though they stay safe longer. Refrigerate after opening and use within 5 to 7 days.
Tips for Success
A wide, heavy-bottomed pot is worth reaching for. The extra surface area lets the sauce reduce faster, and the heavy base spreads the heat so it is less likely to catch and scorch as it cooks down and thickens.
Label and date each jar once it has cooled and sealed. Home canned sauce all looks alike on the shelf, and a date on the lid makes it easy to work through the oldest jars first.
There are quite a few tomato sauce recipes for canning, so if you’re looking for others, I have you covered:
Tomato Sauce Recipes
30+ Pasta Sauce Recipes For Canning
Pasta sauce recipes for canning are surprisingly hard to track down, especially if you’re looking for water bath canning recipes.…
If you tried this Spaghetti Sauce Without Meat recipe, or any other recipe on Creative Canning, leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know what you think in the 📝 comments below!
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Canning Spaghetti Sauce (Basic Recipe without Meat)
Equipment
- Pressure Canner I use an All American Brand 930
Ingredients
- 30 lbs tomatoes
- 1 cup onions, chopped
- 1 cup bell peppers, or celery, diced
- 1 lb mushrooms, fresh not dried, sliced, optional
- 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp oregano, dried
- 4 tbsp parsley, dried
- 2 tsp black pepper, ground
- 4 ½ tsp salt
- ¼ cup olive oil, or vegetable oil
- ¼ cup brown sugar, optional
Instructions
- Wash the tomatoes. Dip them in boiling water for 30 to 40 seconds, or until the skins split and pucker, then dip in cold water or a bucket of ice and remove the skins.
- Core and quarter the tomatoes, then boil them for 20 minutes in a large, uncovered saucepan. Run the tomatoes through a sieve or food mill.
- Saute the onions, celery, peppers, mushrooms, and garlic in the oil until they are tender.
- Combine the vegetables with the tomatoes, then add the rest of the ingredients. Bring everything to a boil, then simmer uncovered until the sauce is thick enough for serving, stirring often to prevent burning. The sauce should reduce by about half.
- While the sauce cooks, prepare a pressure canner for hot pack, along with jars, lids, and rings.
- Once your sauce is ready, fill hot jars, leaving 1 inch headspace.
- Remove air bubbles and adjust the headspace if needed. Wipe the rims of the jars to remove food particles, then add the lids and bands and tighten until they are fingertip tight.
- Load the jars into the canner.
- Turn the heat to high, then allow the canner to vent steam for 10 minutes.
- Add the weight, then process the jars at 11 lbs pressure in a dial gauge canner or 10 lbs pressure in a weighted gauge canner. Process pints for 20 minutes and quarts for 25 minutes. Adjust for altitude as needed.
- When the processing time has finished, allow the canner to depressurize on its own.
- Remove the jars, then allow them to cool for 12 hours. Check the seals before storing.
Notes
- 0 to 2,000 feet in elevation – 11 lbs pressure
- 2,001 to 4,000 feet in elevation – 12 lbs pressure
- 4,001 to 6,000 feet in elevation – 13 lbs pressure
- 6,001 to 8,000 feet in elevation – 14 lbs pressure
- 0 to 1,000 feet in elevation – 10 lbs pressure
- Above 1,000 feet – 15 lbs pressure
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Fill your pressure canner again with more pressure canning recipes, from canning beef and canning potatoes to canning corn, sweet potatoes, and pumpkin:
Pressure Canning Recipes
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Can I add red wine to this recipe?
Yes, that’s fine. Enjoy!
So good! Flavorful and perfect, going to be my go to recipe!
I don’t have a pressure canner. Can I do a water bath if I add lemon juice to the jars before processing?
This particular recipe has too many low acid ingredients to be canned in a waterbath canner (mushrooms, etc). But, there are PLENTY of waterbath canning recipes for pasta sauce. I have a list of all the tested sauce canning recipes out there, and of the 25 recipes, 18 of them are for waterbath canning. You can find that list here: https://creativecanning.com/pasta-sauce-recipes-for-canning/
Enjoy!
How many jars of sauce does this make?
This should make 9 pints.
Hi Ashley,
I am an old time farmer and canner and teach canning classes. I appreciate your website for other recipes. Keep up the good work. I just got done canning lots and lots of jars of blackberry jam.
sincerely,
Heather
Wonderful! I’m so glad it’s useful to you!
Can I increase the mushrooms and decrease the garlic? Garlic doesn’t agree with me.
You can skip the garlic, that’s perfectly fine. For the mushrooms, you can’t increase those. This has a pretty short canning time and that’s based on the fact that it has a lot of acidic ingredients and not many basic ingredients (peppers, onions, mushrooms, etc). If you add more of those you’ll need a much longer process time. There are other tested pasta sauce recipes, and you can find a full list here: https://creativecanning.com/pasta-sauce-recipes-for-canning/
Most don’t have much in the way of mushrooms, largely because mushrooms add so much to the canning time and as a result not many recipes have been tested.
If you want, you can follow the instructions here for canning hearty soups to develop your own mushroom heavy pasta sauce. Know that it’ll have to be pressure canned, and the time will be 75 minutes for pints (rather than the 20 or so for most pasta sauce canning recipes): https://creativecanning.com/choice-meal-in-a-jar-canning-recipe/
The 30 pound of tomatoes, is that before you skin, core and seed them or after? Thanks!
That’s 30 pounds as harvested (or purchased). It’s before processing.
Hi Ashley,
In reading a lot of canned spaghetti sauce recipes, i just couldn’t see that making my own and canning it would make a difference. I didn’t use canned tomatoes or fresh, i used store bought plain canned tomato sauce, browned my meat with some onions and garlic and some italian herb blend added the sauce brought to a boil and cooked to a nice thick sauce. I pressure canned pints for 75 minutes. I still can’t see that i might be in danger. Am i? lol Reading all the instructions don’t add more onions etc etc, does it really have to be so precise?
Thanks in advance!
Pia
All of the tested pasta sauce recipes are pretty precise, mostly because they’re water bath canned or pressure canned for minimal time (as with this recipe). The University of Alaska has instructions for canning hearty soups that allows you to create your own recipe and process it for 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts (publication FNH 00065). If you use those processing times in a pressure canner then you can make your own recipe (with or without meat). It sounds like that’s what you have =)
Turned out great! I had never canned spaghetti sauce. The recipe was easy to follow. Thank you!
Wonderful! I’m so glad you like the recipe =)
Can I omit the sugar or use less or will that make it less shelf stable
Yes, you can omit the sugar. It’s optional, and for flavor rather than preservation.
I can’t wait to try this. I am curious why fresh herbs are not recommended. I always use fresh herbs including basil in my sauce when I can it and freeze it. Do they impact the pressure canning process?
Thank you, so much!
In general, canning recipes have you use dried herbs, but in this particular recipe it won’t make much difference one way or another. This one comes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation doesn’t actually specify either fresh or dried.
Is the Oregano and Parsley in this recipe fresh or died?
I always use dried when I make it, but the NCHFP does not specify one way or the other.
Hi Ashley,
Thank you for all of these wonderful recipes!
For this one specifically, you say you can use store bought tomatoes but I do not see any reference as to the quantity needed. Do you know what the quantity would be?
Thanks!
That’s a really great question!
In this recipe you’re making tomato sauce with the tomatoes in a food mill and then cooking it down. According to the University of Georgia, you need about 30 pounds of tomatoes to make 9 pints of a “thick sauce” when you’re making plain unseasoned tomato sauce. I’ve made it, and their thick sauce is about the thickness of store bought stuff.
So if you’re going to substitute here, I’d guess around 9 to 10 pints of store bought canned tomato sauce would be about right. When substituting though, you’ll want to err on the side of more tomato if anything, so if the amounts are in between in canned stuff you can find, round up and add more.
Since the sauce is already cooked down in cans, you’ll want to cook this for less time.
This is a pressure canning recipe without added acidity, so the main thing here is you want the sauce to be thin enough to pour, not pasty. Make sure you have a pourable sauce when it goes into the jars.
I made this sauce today. It took a lot longer than I had anticipated to cook down to the consistency that I wanted. I used Beef Steak, Celebrity and Early Girl tomatoes, so they may have produced more liquid than a meatier tomato would have. I also had a problem getting the seeds out and the next time I make this I’ll remove the seeds when I core my tomatoes. Even though it was a bit difficult for me to make, it is well worth it. This sauce tastes AMAZING!!! I’ll never want store bought sauce again. Thanks so much for this recipe!
Those heirlooms can be a bit seedier than other varieties, and they have a lot more water, so yes, it’ll take a good bit longer to cook down when using those instead of meatier types. Glad you enjoyed it!
Can this be safely made without the oil?
Yes, you can omit the oil without changing the canning safety.
Yes, the oil is optional and isn’t needed for canning safety.
Can I use canned tomatoes? If so how much?
Yes, you can use canned tomatoes. In general, one 14.5 ounce can of tomatoes equals 1 pound fresh. Since this recipe uses 30 pounds of tomatoes, that’s a lot of canned tomatoes, and you might be better off working with bigger cans. In total, you’d need 435 ounces of canned tomatoes. A number 10 can is about 105 ounces, so you’d need about 4 no. 10 can of canned tomatoes to make this whole recipe.
Can both celery and bell pepper be used in this recipe? Or just one or the other?
You can use both, but the total amount cannot be more than 1 cup combined.
Can you use both green pepper and celery in this recipe, or just one or the other? (ie 1 cup bell pepper and 1 cup chopped celery)
You can use a mix, but the total amount can’t be more than 1 cup. So it’d be 1/2 cup green bell pepper and 1/2 cup celery.
Do you not use vinegar or lemon juice to prevent botulism?
Not in this recipe. Most sauce recipes and tomato recipes in general do add lemon juice or vinegar, but this is a tested pressure canning recipe from the National Center for food preservation that was specifically developed with that in mind so you don’t have to put added acidity into the sauce. They also have water bath canning recipes, and those you do need to add acidity. Some of their pressure canning recipes even include the added lemon juice…but not this one in particular. This is their basic recipe for canning spaghetti sauce without meat and the way it was developed it does not include bonus acidity, which is nice, it doesn’t come out too sour.
If I dice part of the tomatoes instead of milling them all, do I still need to remove the skins? When I’m making tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes I usually just dice them and cook them. Not sure if something about the canning would make that… undesirable? Thanks! I just discovered your website and I’m looking forward to trying some of these!
From a safety perspective, you don’t have to peel the tomatoes or mill them. It’s perfectly fine to use diced tomatoes (or part diced tomatoes).
Some people find that some varieties of tomatoes get bitter when you can the peels, and/or the peels are really tough when canned. That really hasn’t been my experience with most the types of tomatoes I’ve canned, but I’ve heard it from many people, so it just depends. It’s a personal preference thing, and you can do just as you say and dice the tomatoes instead. Enjoy!
I use a blender to puree the tomatoes then I use a mesh strainer. I pour in batches and use a spatula to mush the pulp through leaving seeds and any skin that didn’t fully come off tomatoes. Only sauce my kids will eat is home made. Crazy
Can I reduce the amount of salt for this recipe, or will that affect its shelf life?
Yes, you can reduce the salt in the recipe; that’s for flavor rather than preservation. Enjoy!
Can’t wait to try. Could.i cut the tomatoes, juice.them to remove seeds and skin and then cook them down? I’ve seen recipes like that.. I have a juicer.
Also about how many quart jars will this make? Thanks!
If the juicer is only removing the seeds and skins, then it may work. My juicer also removes the pulp though, which is most of the bulk of the tomato. What your really want here is a food mill or chinois sieve.