Raw Tomato Sauce & Zucchini Noodles
Whether you are following a raw food diet or just need a fresh summer meal without cooking, this raw tomato sauce with zucchini noodles is a great choice for hot summer days. It is a healthy and delicious meal made with fresh, seasonal ingredients, and is naturally vegan, gluten-free and oil-free.
Ingredients for the raw tomato sauce
To make this tasty raw tomato sauce, you will need:
- fresh tomatoes
- dried tomatoes
- dates
- Himalayan salt or sea salt
- red onion
- apple cider vinegar;
- and a zucchini to make the noodles.
When choosing the tomato variety, I always like to go for heirloom sorts – they are naturally full of flavour and taste better than most of the modern varieties. Any type of cherry tomatoes are also a great choice because they are sweeter and often more flavourful than the bigger types.
Dried tomatoes are used in this recipe to enhance the flavour of the raw tomato sauce (after all, when cooking a tomato sauce, we reduce it to bring out the flavour), but also to help with achieving a dense consistency without cooking.
I also like to add some (dried) dates when making a raw tomato sauce. If I was cooking the sauce, I would add a tablespoon of coconut sugar to balance the sour notes of tomatoes, and here I wanted to make it as natural as possible and use only whole food ingredients.
Just like the dried tomatoes, dates will also help to thicken the sauce that would otherwise turn out a bit watery.
Making the tomato sauce and zucchini noodles
To make the raw tomato sauce, you will only need to put all of the ingredients into a blender and blend until smooth. In this recipe I didn’t include soaking the dried tomatoes and dates – fresh tomatoes already contain a lot of water, so the consistency will be just perfect when you blend everything together.
Three ways to make the zucchini noodles
Since the tomato sauce itself is raw, I feel like it would be a shame to serve it with any kind of real pasta. That’s why the zucchini noodles are my favourite choice. You can easily make them in a couple different ways:
- The easiest way would be using a vegetable spiralizer – a simple tool that has perfectly positioned blades for making noodle-like shapes from different kinds of vegetables.
- Using a julienne peeler is another great and cheap way to make vegetable noodles. They obviously won’t be as long as the spiralised ones, but they’ll do the job of pretending to be some kind of pasta.
- Another way is to simply use a regular vegetable peeler and make wide and thin noodle-like stripes. This is how I used to do it all the time until I got a vegetable spiralizer.
Storing the raw tomato sauce and zucchini noodles
I usually like to consume raw food that I make straight away or within a few hours, just because I think all fruits and vegetables are the best if eaten fresh. Still, it would not be a mistake to store the rest of it for later if you were not able to eat it all.
This sauce can be kept in an airtight container in a fridge for around 3 days (at least that is the longest I got to test it before it would get eaten).
Zucchini noodles also won’t go bad if you keep them in a closed container. They can last for 24 h in a fridge for sure, probably longer, but it is always better to make them fresh, of course.
Raw Tomato Sauce & Zucchini Noodles
With this quick and simple raw tomato sauce recipe nobody will even know it's raw, vegan and healthy (the only thing that might give you away are the zucchini noodles!).
Ingredients
- 350 g fresh tomatoes
- 30 g dried tomatoes (6 halves)
- 30 g dried bam dates (6 pieces)
- 1-2 pinches Himalayan salt or sea salt
- 30 g red onion (½ smaller head)
- 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 500 g zucchini (2 small ones)
Instructions
- Chop all the ingredients except zucchini.
- Mix the onions with apple cider vinegar and leave for 10-15 minutes to make them a bit milder.
- Put fresh and dried tomatoes, dates, salt and onion into a blender and blend until smooth.
- Spiralize the zucchini.
- Serve the zucchini noodles with the sauce and consume freshly made if possible. Bon appétit!
Notes
* use cherry tomatoes or some heirloom varieties for the best flavour.
* I used dried bam dates, but any other dates will work well too.
* to make the zucchini noodles, you can use a vegetable spiralizer tool, a julienne peeler or a regular vegetable peeler.
