What could have made my red sauce so watery ?

Sounds like you might need to add a little tomato paste at some point to thicken the sauce.

The substance that holds the water in tomato sauce in suspension is a protein called pectin. It acts like a gelling agent when heated and binds up much of the water. If tomatoes are crushed and exposed to air before heating, an enzyme within the tomatoes is activated that destroys the pectin so that it won’t be there to bind the water.

The key to not activating the enzyme is to not expose the flesh of the tomato to air any more than necessary prior to cooking, and to heat it as quickly as possible to deactivate the enzyme. Ideally, any fresh tomato included in the sauce would be peeled (by immersing in boiling water), cut in half (along its “equator”) to scoop out the seeds, then gradually chopped directly into the hot pan so it cooks immediately.

In your case, was the “sieved tomato” fresh tomato that had been pushed through a sieve? Or was there any other form of fresh tomato that had been crushed or chopped prior to cooking?

@autumn43 Tomato paste is puree

The sieved tomatoes were store bought pre sieved and the other tomatoes were tinned. all apart from the vine tomatoes i roasted in the oven

Why are you adding so many different sorts of tomato? I generally use diced tomato for the texture and tomato paste/puree for thickness. You can also simply skip the diced tomato and use just the paste.

Also, true chile con carne, at least here in Texas, doesn’t have tomato in it at all. It is thickened with a bit of finely ground corn flour otherwise used in making tortillas.

I am not making true chilli con carne i am making my family version , also for the lots of different tomatoes i do it for the different textures and flavours .

You can always cheat and add a couple of tablespoons of flour while cooking the onion and leek. The starch will help the pectin bind the water.

Also, are you using sauce tomatoes such as Roma, or are you using salad tomatoes? The latter contain a lot more water.

I prefer not to use flour as a thickening agent as i dont like what it does to things .
These were tomatoes labeled as perfect for these types of sauce and cooking.

@sandystrachan – here’s a link about puree vs. paste – they really are a bit different.

http://www.cookthink.com/reference/57/Tomato_paste_vs_tomato_pur%C3%A9e_vs_tomato_sauce

@autumn: In the UK, what they call puree is what we in the US call paste.

@sandystrachan
The advice harp gave was good. I’ll only add, maybe try leaving out one of the styles of tomato you use. I’d leave out the roasted tomatoes. Keep everything else the same: tinned tomatoes (you may want to strain these), puree and mince (drained, like you did). If you add the roasted tomatoes, there will be a lot more liquid in the sauce.

I just noticed you cooked onion at the beginning. Did you notice if there was a large amount of water when you did that?

@Les No fluid from onions if there was any present it had dried in the pan as it was extremely hot .

Was it water? Water can make stuff watery.

Alas @jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities it was not water of this i am certain .