For most of my life I ate tomato sauce out of a jar. Right from the store, into a pot, onto the pasta. Every once in a while my parents would make a special sauce from scratch or canned tomatoes. I ate scratch sauces in restaurants of course. One day a few years ago, I was eating a store bought sauce at home and it suddenly was horrible to me. I couldn’t imagine ever eating a prefab sauce ever again.
This recipe still uses canned tomatoes, but it’s a huge step up from jarred tomato sauce, so easy to make, and can be modified to anyones taste. I’ll never go back!
Ingredients:
1 large can tomato puree
2-3 cloves garlic
1 small onion
olive oil
salt, pepper, sugar to taste
Equipment:
knife
cutting board
pot
spoon
Fine chop garlic. Chop onions as fine as you would like, I usually do mine in a large dice. Add oils, garlic and onion to the pan over low to medium heat. Cook until the onions and garlic are soft and translucient. I try never to burn mine but if those are flavors that you like, go ahead. Add tomato puree and cook for a few minutes to warm tomatoes thru. Add sugar, salt and pepper. I add about a teaspoon of salt and pepper, and and two tablespoons of sugar. Sometimes I add less sugar, it just depends what mood I’m in. Cover and simmer over low heat for 20 -50 min depending on how thick you like your sauce. Serve over pasta, use for pizza, use in rice, or anything else you like tomato sauce on.
A few notes:
- I know sugar in tomato sauce is controversial, but I like it.
- Add any herbs you like as well. I try to keep a few frozen herbs/oil ice cubes from summer and like to add these occasionally. Fresh or dried herbs work great, too. Chili flakes would also be good, I’m sure.
- I prefer my sauce to be smooth, so I use tomato puree, but if you like chunks/seeds you could use diced or whole tomatoes.
- The better the canned tomatoes you use, the better the sauce will be. Same goes for olive oil.
- This recipe usually yields about 3 meals for us, depending on how we use it. We generally get two pasta meals from it, maybe three, and then I use the last little bit when making rice or lentils (I just add sauce right to the cooking water).
Using loose veg, canned tomatoes, and oil and spices in metal or glass make this a very zero waste friendly recipe. Refill the spices from a bulk section, refill the oil if possible, and reuse the can (good for seedlings if you poke a few holes in the bottom), or recycle it, to be even more zero waste.
I’ve seen other easy tomato sauce recipes; one interesting one used only tomatoes, salt and butter. Do you have a go to sauce recipe?
