I don't really cook huge meals so I don't own many large pots. I've currently got that pot in the photo going (with the lid off) as well as the electric pressure cooker (on sauté, lid off) with about half the volume of the epc in the fridge waiting for some of this to reduce.
I do the actual water bath canning in large enamel pots in a propane burner outside. I pressure can indoors (one layer only, in a pressure canner made for glass top/induction) so neither of those are really suitable for sauce making.
Do folks just live with doing things in batches? Should I just accept I could use another large pot I only use once a year?
This is about half of the 60 lbs we are preserving this year. I'm going to blanch and dice some tomatoes using a smaller pot and put those in the fridge to do the cooking step tomorrow for crushed tomatoes while the sauce is in the water bath canner.
I'm also thinking of getting an electric roaster which I can leave on the counter top. I bought a slow cooker at the thrift shop a few years ago but didn't realize they didn't get hot enough to reduce sauce in 🤦♀️
I try not to own too much stuff, but I do have the room (in the basement lol).
Are you making sauce-sauce? Like, not canned diced tomatoes or something? I canned tomatoes for a while, and I still do for recipes like salsa or marinara. But if I just want tomatoes reduced to sauce for later use, I just boil them down into tomato paste, freeze them in ice cube trays, then decant then into ziploc freezer bags. When I need tomato-whatever, I just grab the frozen cubes and reconstitute them back to whatever the appropriate level is: juice, sauce, soup, puree, etc. I just found it to be less fiddly than canning tomatoes, and I'd rather spend that time and energy canning giardinieri, jams, corn, beans, or whatever else is in season.