Conor Mertens making tomato sauce at home. Video / Conor Mertens
A Gisborne woman has spilled what she says is the secret Wattie’s tomato sauce recipe after hearing the company plans to shut down some New Zealand operations.
Beverley Bodle-Carswell claims Sir James Wattie gave the recipe to her mother when she lived in Hawke’s Bay.
“Way back before I wasborn, my parents lived next door to the Watties in the early 1940s,” said Bodle-Carswell. “She said Sir James gave her the recipe, and she always made it.”
She has no idea why the Wattie’s founder gave the recipe to her mother, Violet Edna Bodle.
The families were good friends. Bodle-Carswell used to babysit later generations of the Wattie family.
She said her family grew up making and eating the sauce.
Today's Wattie's in the bottle with the old recipe in the pot. Photo / Conor Mertens
“That’s all we had. Dad had a huge veggie garden. He had half an acre, and half of it was a vegetable garden, and mum always did preserves and made tomato sauce.”
“My mum passed away in 2004 and my sister in 2001, so when I pass on, the recipe will be lost forever. So why not share it out to people that will appreciate it?”
The recipe has changed with the passage of time, with a few “modifications”.
To put the recipe to the test, the Herald shared the recipe with Conor Mertens, head chef of Elephant Hill Restaurant in Hawke’s Bay, for a review.
Mertens gathered the ingredients, bought a bottle of Wattie’s sauce for comparison and cooked a batch using Bodle-Carswell’s recipe.
Mertens halved the recipe and ended up with three litres of sauce. Photo / Conor Mertens
Place all ingredients in a large pot and boil for 2 hours (stir now and then to stop catching on the bottom), then put through a blender and pour into sterilised bottles with screw lids.
Conor Mertens said tomato sauce tastes like the beginning of New Zealand's iconic Wattie's one. Photo / Conor Mertens
Bodle-Carswell has given some tips for success. She says “never, ever” use iodised salt in preserves because it turns things black. And for less sugar, she uses three tablespoons of sugar replacement, like Sugromax, because diabetes runs in the family.
The easiest way to skin tomatoes is to freeze them and “stick them in water, and the skins just slide right off”.
If you are using fresh tomatoes, she says, you’ll either have to blanch them in boiling water or cut them in half, grate them, and leave the skin aside.
