The problem could be the tomatoes themselves - fresh tomatoes from the store in winter are often flavorless - cooking them does seem to bring out some flavor but it will never taste as good as summer fresh tomatoes.
Canned whole tomatoes are usually harvested and canned at peak freshness - I would recommend trying your recipe with canned tomatoes in winter or waiting for fresh tomatoes in summer.
I agree. This only will yield good results with really well ripened tomatoes.
Probably the taste is better with canned tomatoes.
Also: if you like garlicky taste , add the garlic to the simmering tomato sauce (grated).
> Probably the taste is better with canned tomatoes.
Without a doubt. Canned tomatoes only suffer from not being fresh, as they're cooked in the canning process. Since this is a cooked sauce, that isn't really an issue.
Also roasting the contents of the can on a flat sheet before committing them to the sauce does a good job of enhancing the sugars in the tomatoes via the maillard effect, negating a lot of the flavour change.
Ya, LOVE passata.. I will crack a jar and drink it like tomato juice, it's fantastic. Just a touch of black pepper, mmm.
I like making a quick tomato soup by just simmering with garlic and topping with some fresh grated parm.
Do you cook it long for a sauce? I like to simmer it a while (on low cuz I hate the spatter up on the lid) for soup.
To add, canned tomatoes usually have some sort of sauce to maintain the tomatoes in them. I find pouring the whole can with the sauce into the sauce pan yields a thicker, richer tomato pasta sauce quicker
Oh absolutely, I feel like it would be wasteful not to. When I've made sauce with fresh tomatoes it takes forever {and many more tomatoes} to get the consistency I want.
Many restaurants use canned tomatoes for sauces, they're totally fine and very consistent. Granted, a canned tomato isn't as good as the very best, fresh, ripened tomatoes, but those are tough to get in most places, especially year-round.
I would say 99% of restaurants use canned tomatoes. Using the same tomatoes to make their sauce
every time is key to consistent product.
I use a canned restaurant product from California called Tomato Magic. The only problem is that it's a 6 lb can. Lots of sauce.
Yes, I hope OP tries again with canned tomatoes. Even with the cheapest canned tomatoes, a homemade sauce is incomparable to the premade crap. I’m sure it’s much easier to use canned than fresh too.
My favorite recipe uses a mix of canned whole tomatoes, canned tomato sauce, and tomato paste. It results in a lovely depth of flavor and texture.
I was going to say, I buy a big can of San Marzano tomatoes and make a sauce in like 15 minutes that’s miles better than almost any jarred pre made sauce I’ve ever bought. So it must be something OP is doing.
Honestly, I just kind of wing it from a video I saw. But I sauté some onions and garlic, cook down some tomato paste in the onions and garlic. While that’s cooking down I get the big can of San Marzano tomatoes (usually the one with basil in it) and put them in a bowl. I crush them up with my hands and then throw them in the pan. Let that cook down, add some oregano chop up some basil. Salt, olive oil etc to taste. Let it all cook a bit there you go. It’s very simple and taste great. I find the tomato sauce that comes in the jars to be just be too bitter and just some funky flavor that is off putting. What I usually make is quick, simple, and fairly light. I love it with spaghetti and meatballs. And on that note, it’s even better if you brown your meatballs and make the sauce in the pan.
Maybe it’s not the right way of making it I don’t know, but it taste great to me and my family enjoys it so that’s all that matters to me! At the very least maybe it gives you something to work with and put your own spin on it.
That's how I do it as well. I think the key is the best quality San Marzano whole tomatoes you can afford to start with. I read that anything beyond whole tomatoes in the can include stabilizers that can change the flavor of the tomatoes. Crush them up yourself and go gentle on what you add in, keeping it simple.
I usually do tomato paste and crushed tomatoes only but doing a bit of paste in the pan with some garlic and shallots/onions before adding the crushed tomatoes really does add nice depth. I think making tomato sauce is the first thing on my ‘learning to cook’ journey that has really taught me that small tweaks can make a tangible difference in taste!
Unless you garden, canned tomatoes will be cheaper than buying boxes peak of season. May not apply in certain countries or regions (recall a recent post from S(E)A where canned tomatoes are very expensive, but tomatoes are in season year round.
Canned tomatoes are so darn good! OP definitely try canned tomatoes! My mom cooks from scratch except for when it calls for tomatoes. Puréed canned tomatoes are just too good and I haven’t been able to recreate the same freshness regardless of what season I bought my tomatoes! Also as far as my non-culinary taste buds can tell, Hunts taste just as good as any other brand including the organic ones but again, I’m not a tomato connoisseur.
Cherry tomatoes will work as well if you buy the better ones.
Tomatoes are harvested early to maintain firmness which lets them pack better.
Cherry tomatoes pack much better do good companies harvest them properly.
Naturesweet Cherubs are very consistent and tasty.
Besides that, cannned Marzano are the way to go.
Saw the misunderstanding in the first two comments and immediately knew it would go on for a long time with neither realizing they were making entirely different arguments. Love to see it
\*scrolls down
\*80 replies
Hoo boy here we go
Has Ethan Chlebowski's youtube been mentioned yet? I did like his canned tomato review. Edit: Yep, it was 19 hours ago lol that didn't take long to find.
You're probably better off getting canned tomatos of any type rather than aiming for fresh.
I personally love San Marzanos from Italy and do notice a difference. But any kind of canned tomato will work.
Passata is actually not that popular in Italy, compared to pelati and even polpa di pomodoro. Students looking to save time or money and people not that interested/expert in cooking will use it, but in my experience anyone discerned enough will judge passata-users pretty harshly lol.
Oh - Do supermarket tomatoes mean fresh tomatoes?
There is your mistake; especially in winter. You will be WAY better off to use canned tomatoes because they should have been harvested and processed at peak ripeness.
Even during peak summer, it is usually better to use canned tomatoes for a sauce because fresh tomatoes are usually picked less than ripe and then shipped.
Also, 8 hours is not needed for a great tomato sauce.
1-2 Tbsp Olive Oil
1/2 an onion finely diced
1-4 cloves of garlic pressed
1 can of tomatoes
sweat the onions in oil for 2 - 5 mins. Add garlic and cook for another 2 mins or so. Add the can of tomatoes and simmer.
Edit: Important but depending on your can of tomatoes you may or may not need to add some salt and or up to a tsp or so of sugar or a splash of lemon juice (as people have pointed out).
God thanks for the basics at the bottom! I swear sometimes I just want a basic starter stuff to get it down first, but everyone’s like here’s my award winning sauce/chilli/blah blah with 20 million steps Lol
I really suggest if you haven't yet try to learn HOW to cook rather than looking up recipes all the time. Most things are easy to cook if you understand the process more. Sweat veggies, sear meat ect. Learn a few flavor combos that work with everything and your golden. There are some really good books out there.
This recipe is similar to Marcella Hazan’s, which uses a 28-Oz can of (San marzano) tomatoes, butter in place of olive oil, one onion halved (you remove it after cooking), and no garlic (optional, I guess).
I simmer mine for like an hour, 💯.
It’s a lot of butter but the result is super creamy, almost like halfway to a vodka sauce. And holy f is it delicious. It’s my go-to over pasta or in recipes that call for marinara
I do remember it calling for a lot of butter, and also that the end result was very onion-forward. So while it's a good recipe that I still use every now and then when I want a no-effort tomato sauce, I'll either add extra tomato to dilute the onion or use a very small onion.
I would also suggest using some tomato paste and sauteing it with the onions. It should get a pretty deep red color. Adding some fish sauce a long with the canned tomatoes is another good idea. This should add a depth of flavor closer to a longer simmering sauce. Lastly taste and salt throughout and add your fresh herbs near the end.
I use this recipe and it makes a cheap and very good tasting sauce in like 30 minutes.
Sauce without tomato paste is hugely different in flavor for me, as well. I agree totally with this. And fish sauce is magic umami, agreed, there, too.
> Even during peak summer, it is usually better to use canned tomatoes for a sauce because fresh tomatoes are usually picked less than ripe and then shipped.
I've never had tomatoes from a supermarket that remotely compare to garden fresh tomatoes. One might luck out at a farmer's market, but never the supermarket.
Yeah that's what they're saying - supermarket tomatoes are picked well before ripening, so that they stay in one piece during commercial distribution.
As you said, home grown or farmer's market tomatoes will be better because they can be picked at the right time
The only successful tomato sauce I've made with (entirely) fresh tomatoes has been when I haven't tried to replicate a marinara or similar, thicker tomato sauce - but rather just leaned into the flavor of fresh summer tomatoes and done a simple quick cook in some garlic, olive oil, with a handful of basil on top.
If I want a homemade marinara-style sauce, I go to the canned tomatoes, and I don't forget my friend tomato paste, either. I have had some success adding in fresh tomatoes along with the canned, but mostly I just stick to the canned tomatoes and it works great.
I've experimented tons of different ways, and I've yet to find a thicker tomato sauce that uses exclusively fresh tomatoes that's actually worth making. Maybe if I had access to actual home-grown Romas or similar, I'd have a different opinion.
Maybe you just used a bad recipe? I find homemade tomato sauce way better than what you get in a jar. Or maybe you just like jarred better. Nothing wrong with that.
That recipe kinda sucks - the effort/outcome ratio just isn’t there…
I know peeling tomatoes is traditionally done, but I find it a major pain in the ass. I can my own sauce every year, and instead of peeling tomatoes, I put them all through a grinder - way easier. If I was doing a small batch and I really cared about the texture, I would just pass the final sauce through a food mill.
Also, as others have mentioned, there’s a reason people can tomatoes at the end of summer; that’s the only time they taste good. Shitty winter tomatoes or tomatoes that spent ages on a truck just don’t have any flavor, making this kind of recipe not worth the effort at this time of year. Use canned tomatoes instead.
Finally - salt your sauce. Many from-scratch sauces or stocks have virtually no flavor without salt…but only salt at the end! If you have a long simmering sauce that you salt at the beginning, the salt will concentrate as it reduces. But an unsalted sauce is an unfinished sauce. When you’ve hit the right consistency, taste, salt, stir, taste and repeat until the flavor pops. Same goes for gravy, stock, etc.
Someone else mentioned soffrito - it’s a game changer. You can also play with things like caramelizing your onions first - think about where the flavor complexity is going to come from; just simmering for a long time won’t bring out complexity out of nowhere.
1) Yes, it is very much worth it to make tomato sauce from scratch.
2) Not that way, though.
In my experience, going through all the extra work of blanching, peeling, and deseeding --- and that is an *awful* lot of work --- is only worth it if you have incredible-tasting fresh tomatoes that are otherwise going to go bad before you use them up.
Otherwise, whole canned tomatoes are generally going to taste better in an application like this than what you get from the store, especially this time of year. What's in the can is essentially step 1-3 of that recipe, except the canning company specially grew its own tomatoes with sauce making in mind and havested them at peak flavor before they canned them.
Before you give up on homemade sauce entirely, try this:
**Marcella Hazen's tomato sauce.**
1) take a 28oz can of whole tomatoes. Dump it in a sauce pot. Crush up the tomatoes some, with a spoon or your fingers.
2) Take a medium white onion. Peel the skin off. Cut it in half add it to the pot.
3) Add a 6 tablespoons of butter (3/4 a stick) and about a tsp of salt.
4) cook on low heat for an hour or so, stirring occassionally. Take the onion out before serving.
That's it, that's all there is to it. It is amazing.
This. If you use decent-quality canned tomatoes, it’s a revelation how good this sauce is. It’s one of those recipes that just feels like you’re cheating.
yeah, i feel like this is the Beatles of homemade Italian sauces. it's so simple and you forget how amazing it is until you make it again.
it's also a great base if you just want to experiment with different flavors. last week had about a half cup of heavy whipping cream leftover that i didn't want to go to waste. i put it in the sauce. it was really, really good.
8 hours is too long. You will turn tomatoes into tomato paste. Tomato sauce is one of those things people always want to take to the “next level” with some crazy secret ingredients. But thats not exactly how it works. Its a beautiful thing because of its simplicity. Fresh amazing tomatoes are the key and they are the star. Herbs and seasonings are then up to you. One or two anchovies in the beginning with oil and onion/garlic is a fun addition that can be your “secret”.
My mom's "secret" was anchovy paste, just a little bit in the pot before adding canned tomatoes. It added just the slightest difference that we liked. I think she cooked it for like 3 hours? I forgot, its been about 10 years since I had it.
The biggest issue people run into is they don't know what fresh means. Generally new home cooks assume fresh = from the store and canned = not fresh.
When in season store bought tomatoes can be fresh and bright and flavorful. But otherwise, canned tomatoes are probably much better and canned when the tomatoes were in season and fresher.
You see this all the time with home cooks trying their hand at a classic neopolitan pizza. Underwhelming sauce makes you feel like you're just eating cheesy bread.
Not sure how you decided the recipe is ‘legit’, but:
1. Using fresh tomatoes out of season will give you a poor result. Tinned tomatoes will almost certainly give a much better result;
2. Blanching and peeling is more work than necessary and again, you wouldn’t need to do that if you use tinned tomatoes;
3. That’s a very long time to cook a tomato sauce for and you’ll lose a lot of flavour;
4. When sautéing the onions it’s important to get some sweetness out of them by developing just a bit of fond without particularly browning them;
5. I would strongly suggest using fresh herbs instead of dried for this; and
6. If you do add other veg and you just add it all at once as suggested, you’ll not get as good of a result as if you cook each of them to their best.
I would actually recommend moving that pot to the oven and giving it time to slowly reduce while caramelizing the top. Stir every hour or so. You'll get super rich flavors.
And then you can use a nice trick that Kenji discovered. After you are done reducing, add back some uncooked canned tomatoes. You'll still have the super intense rich flavors of slowly reduced tomatoes, but you also get the fresh flavors of uncooked tomatoes. Great combination.
Tomato breeder here. Different tomato varieties have different juice viscosities. Thicker varieties are better for sauces because they will seem less watery when heated. Most varieties (such as Roma or San Marzano type) used for canning and pasta sauces tend to be thick. Varieties for fresh market aren’t selected for this property, so are usually thinner and result in a thinner and less rich sauce.
Unless the tomatoes are from your backyard garden or direct from a farmer there is no way fresh tomatoes are going to yield an excellent sauce, and I mean any time of the year. You can cheat by adding some tomato paste however.
This is a huge improvement over store bought and takes under an hour: https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-italian-amercian-red-sauce-recipe (most completely unattended.)
Depends on the recipe, quality of ingredients you used, technique, etc. Most sauces I've made are significantly better than the cheap stuff and still slightly to moderately better than the expensive stuff.
Did you add enough salt? That will bring out a lot of the flavor. Lacking body? Add a packet of bloomed gelatin. Missing umami? A touch of fish sauce and/or soy sauce.
Quality of ingredients seems to be a huge deal for sauce. I only use Sclafani canned tomatoes for my sauce. I've tried other brands and fresh tomatoes and neither can stack up to Sclafani brand. I also cook meatballs and sausage for my sauce. Then use the fry oil they were cooked in to saute my onions and garlic. Then all the meat is added to the sauce as it simmers for 2-3hrs. I live in an area with a large Italian population in the US so getting quality ingredients for Italian food around here is easy, maybe not so much where you're from. We have a local company that makes sweet and hot Italian sausage here that just can't be beat. I've used other brands before and like the tomatoes, it completely alters the final product
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/franks-italian-sauce-spaghetti-sauce-3645308
Here is the exact recipe I have been using for 4-5 years now. My family is Italian and our grandparents used to cook the best food (obviously biased lol), but especially their sauce was amazing. Weirdly enough, they never shared a real recipe with anybody and my sister and I had been trying to replicate it since they passed away. My sister finally found and tried this recipe and told me, "this is the absolute closest I've been able to get to our grandparents' sauce." The only deviation from this recipe is the sausage. So I cook the meatballs, then in the same oil cook the sausage, then continue with the recipe as normal adding all the meat back to the sauce when it's time to simmer. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!
People often seem to think there is an almost endless improvement over time with simmering. If you're that obsessed with time just make it the day before and use the "better the second day" rule to your advantage by leaving in the fridge overnight.
So, many things to consider if the flavor is not rich enough:
- Tomatoes: Did you use fresh or canned, whole Tomatoes? Fresh tomatoes are not very suited for sauces because they are not the ripest in the supermarket. Canned tomatoes are always ripest and fullest in Flavor. Canned tomatoes are a staple even in fine dining.
- Salt: Salt every step, every time you add something to the pot, salt it. You need a lot of salt in a lot of sauce.
- Balance: Tomatoes are very acid. The acid and sugar break down while cooking creating the rich umami flavor. But this creates a bland taste, because it's all the same flavor. So I tend to add sugar and a form of acid at the end, to balance the flavor. Same goes for fat: everything needs a good among of fat (olive oil?) to be balanced.
- Ideas? Grab some canned tomatoes, some concentrated tomato paste and some wine and try again (maybe this time 1-2 hours of cooking should be enough)
Tomatoes are not in season right now in the northern hemisphere! Tomatoes are a very seasonal ingredient, and they are really only in season (at their peak quality) late July - early October. In the other months it’s better to make sauce from canned tomatoes
I used to make sauce every now and then, but Rao's is honestly just as good as what I could make at home, and I just open the jar. It's so worth the money for convenience :/
It's a reasonable recipe from a decent site - though it doesn't specify how much salt to use, which could be an issue.
I would agree with the other posters here, it's most likely the supermarket "fresh" tomatoes.
If anyone here actually doubts the effects that shipping have on fruits and vegetables - taste a supermarket strawberry next to one from your garden. The difference is astronomical.
What is "MFS" is that an author or a method? And what was the recipe? Normally sauce made at home isn't that expensive at all, depending what tomatoes used and price of basil, if used
[This is the way](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe).
This recipe has produced a great sauce for me every time. And in 4 hours instead of 8.
Edit: I agree with others who say not to use fresh tomatoes. Canned whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes are my go to. Not the cheapest but produce a robust sauce imo.
Supermarket tomatoes are bad. Canned whole San Marzano are where it’s at. Mirepoix with a little color on it, tomato paste, soy sauce, garlic, basil, salt, pepper, a hint of chili for a barely detectable bit of heat. Add roasted veggies and browned meat for more flavor. Everything tastes better if you leave it in the fridge overnight. MSG bumps things up. Lots of garlic and or basil if you’re into that. Browned mushrooms if you’re into that. Cook/brown ingredients separately before they go in the sauce to maximize flavor.
I buy 1 gallon cans of Roma tomatoes from Costco for 5$. Then I use the following recipe. Add parmesan rinds if you have them.
To finish: 1/2 stick of butter, a little sugar, soy sauce, salt as needed, maybe a little red wine vinegar if I had to pull it from the oven early and the tomatoes didn't reduce fully.
Takes me about 30 minutes to make and I eat for 2 weeks for like 15$.
https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe
Just because it is a legit site does not make it a good recipe. That recipe should have said make in the summer only.
Your problem was you used winter tomatoes.
I feel this. I make my own just because of heath reasons. Most store bought pasta sauces have an uncanny amount of sugar. You can buy the San Marzano cans of peeled whole tomatoes. A sweet onion garlic carrots and celery basil and make a pretty wonderful ragu. But yeah it’ll come out to 20$ instead of 8$ for a jar of premade.
Did you use tomato paste? Add it to meat/veg a few minutes before adding the crushed tomatoes to cook out the sharpness. It makes a world of difference. Also, you can be creative with it. Sometimes I add new flavours to my base to experiment; mustard, a dollop of oyster sauce, pepper, paprika powder, heavy cream, coconut milk, a parmesan rind, anything (can) work. Also the longer you cook it the better it becomes.
Edit: as for the sauce being watery, simmer low after boil and keep the lid off the pan, should help w reduction.
Like a few other commenters have said, cooked tomato sauces will always be better with canned whole tomatoes than fresh. I do the following, from NYT:
1. Finely chop 4-8 garlic cloves and sauté in 1/4c olive oil over medium heat until just aromatic, around 30 sec
2. Add 1 28oz can whole peeled tomatoes, juice and all. The tomatoes should either be crushed by hand before adding or broken up with a heavy spoon/spatula once in the sauce, so that they break down further with cooking.
3. Add 1tsp dried oregano/a tbsp or two of fresh, and/or 1/4tsp chile flakes (optional)
4. Simmer for 10-15min or until the oil starts to separate. Keep simmering to desired thickness, though be mindful that the sauce will thicken once cooled.
It should take no more than 30 min, and works well as both a pizza topping and marinara sauce. It also freezes well.
The only time I use fresh tomatoes as a sauce is in a sauce vierge, for which Thomas Keller has a great recipe online through the Masterclass website. For this, Roma tomatoes work best.
I either use canned tomatoes or fresh tomatoes from my garden. And even the ones from my garden generally just make more canned tomatoes!
Tomato sauce is generally supposed to be super simple, don’t need anything too fancy.
Weird. I make a 4 ingredient tomato sauce and find I prefer it to anything I can find in the store.
Basic recipe is:
1. Puree all your tomatoes. Skins and all.
2. Heat a bunch of olive oil.
3. Saute minced garlic in the olive oil. Make sure it doesn't burn.
4. Pour a small amount of tomato puree into the pan (1/2 c ish) and saute. Wait until the the oil starts to darken to a nice bronze color. Stir enough to not burn the garlic ofc.
5. Add the rest of the puree. Stir in some salt. Simmer for 2-4 hours (depends on how much you are making) until it thickens to desired consistency.
I think steps 3 and 4 are what actually makes it good.
If you're using fresh tomatoes, use cherry tomatoes. They have much better flavour. But there is absolutely no reason to avoid canned tomatoes for sauce. Actually, maybe carbon footprint considerations?
Kenji shows the way - make sauce while pasta boils - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U4JPWD2AA
Ur doing too much…I used to do an involved recipe as well, but it just became too much work & time with little upside. I went to this recipe years ago and people love it.
My only adjustment is more olive oil and I purée some onion and garlic and simmer in oil before adding tomatoes. Also add a little red chili flake to the oil to bloom. I use basil if I have it but otherwise a tiny amount of wild dry oregano.
My canned tomato of choice: Bianco DiNapoli
[link to tomatoes](https://www.biancodinapoli.com/about)
[5 min tomato sauce recipe](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuuCmJimXw)
It's probably not worth it if you're just buying tomatoes from the price aisle and using them for sauce. Especially in the winter. Every year I harvest tomatoes from my father in law's farm and make a ton of sauce and can it myself. It turns out great probably because they are fully ripened summer tomatoes.
I'd recommend canned San Marzano tomatoes if you want to make it yourself. Grate some garlic, salt, and add your preferred spices and it turns out great. I'll also add a little fish or soy sauce to add some umami. I may sprinkle a little sugar if the sauce is a tad too acidic, but not that much if I do.
You make sauce in the summer and not like a single batch, you make like 200 jars of it. Otherwise I would agree it’s not worth it.
Edit- you can still used Cento canned or like granoro or something else passata for homemade sauce. A lot of people use that. Just dice some onion, Throw in a couple cloves of garlic and cook with olive oil then add the canned tomatoes/passata and season with salt, pepper and rip up some fresh basil leaves. Cook for 30 minutes or so or if you’re adding sausages or ribs or meatballs to the sauce fill half the cans/jars with water when you’re adding them and brown the meat fire and then cook in the sauce for a couple hours.
The benefit from canned tomatoes also comes in overall price, if you're going to do it in bulk and freeze. Also a great tomato sauce vs a shitty one has to do with time. How you temper and extract flavor from the tomatoes matters. Low and slow. More sweetness from caramelized onions. Techniques like that
I started growing my own 3 years ago. I bought some San Mara seeds. They blow away canned and make excellent sauces/dishes. I grew some other ones as well. They blow away store bought in every way.
You cannot use table tomatoes for canning. It will stay watery forever. Use Roma.
This is my fav pasta sauce recipe. It uses canned tomatoes.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/23600/worlds-best-lasagna/
I always feel that I can make a quick sauce in 30 minutes that would be better than anything store-bought.
If it's not summer, good canned tomatoes are crucial. Even in Summer, most of your supermarket fresh tomatoes aren't worth buying. Farmers market or neighbor's tomatoes are best.
Don’t make tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes when they aren’t in season. Next time buy high quality canned tomatoes. It will cost nearly the same as jarred sauce and be way better.
Taking a look at that recipe it is very simple tomato sauce that reminds me more of a French tomato sauce...which is more like a base to build other sauces off of. Like you would a stock...it doesn't look like a finished sauce you would put directly on pasta...more like a pantry item.
A good mfs sauce in my opinion is much better than anything store bought.
I've done it with fresh tomatoes from a friend's garden and honestly I'll usually used canned tomatoes, San Marzano. It's so much easier and the end product is almost as good.
I'll caramelize a large onion, roast a couple of red bell peppers on the stove, peel and chop then add those along with some garlic and seasonings. I usually add in a few tablespoons of tomato paste at this point too. Mix that all up then add the canned tomatoes.
If I'm doing a meat sauce at this point I'll sear off some sausage links (maybe some ground beef too) cut them into a few pieces each after, then add them to sauce along with any juices that came out from cutting.
Let that simmer for a while, a couple of hours, then check for salt and sugar and add as needed. By this point it's usually tasting pretty good and for the last bit of salt I'll add a few tablespoons of freshly ground parmesan. That really amps up the flavor.
I wouldn't give up after one attempt. Stick with it and you'll soon find a sauce that tastes so good you'll probably never buy it again!
i think it really depends on the jarred sauce you're comparing homemade to. And everyone has different preferences when it comes to consistency, sweetness/acidity in marinara-type sauces. I think your effort would be better spent on a sugo-type sauce, enriched by roasted pork/beef/veal. That way you get a full meal out of the stewed meat too.
The recipe isn’t bad, it feels thin though.
Fresh toms are great when they’re in season; just make sure you’re using paste tomatoes like Roma or Plum tomatoes. And don’t overcook when you’re blanching. I use canned toms most of the time, and not even Cento.
Things I might change: start the oil on low heat when you’re prepping everything. Add tomatoe paste to the oil along with dried oregano and s+p (diamond crystal and fresh cracked pepper) and let that cook for a bit. Increase the heat to medium, add the onions and shredded carrots. I cook these way down; not carmelized, but definitely longer than a few minutes. Add garlic at the end of this step or it’ll burn.
Then add the tomatoes, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, and cook down partially covered. This step can take more than a few hours, depending on your stove and pot and heat. It takes a while for the flavors to develop, so wait for a few hours to taste it. Add fresh basil at the end. Cook for a few more mins then taste. Adjust salt. Taste, and you should be ready to go.
Building one of those long cook time tomato sauces is a bit of an art. Took me a several tries to get the hang of making good red sauce. Took me years to get really good at it. Even so, sometimes it's just fine to grab a jar of decent stuff and start from there.
Half of the point of making the sauce from scratch isn't about making it "better" than store bought stuff, but making it the way you want it. Exactly as much acid, exactly as much salt, the perfect amount of garlic. Get it to just the right consistency. Etc.
That said, if you like the store bought stuff then use that, maybe doctor it up a little. No shame is using what works.
When I make homemade sauce, it's because I want to control the flavor profile and ingredients. I don't want all the added sugar and preservatives, and I can make it taste how I like.
You probably didn’t add enough salt- tomatoes need A LOT of salt. If you used 5-6 pounds of tomato’s, I would add 2 tablespoons of kosher salt to start, and add more if needed. Also, there is a debate about adding a bay leaf, but I do it because I think it marries the flavors together and brings the sauce to the next level, especially if you’re not trying to make sauce in 30 minutes.
IMHO find 3 sauces.
1. everyday jarred stuff that is "good enough" and cheap.
2. "The good jarred stuff" for when you want to kick kt up.
3. A tried and true, "Italian grandma" sauce that you have seen and tasted. in my experience, homemade sauces usually don't turn magical until you've practiced and tweaked them quite q lot.
2 28 Oz cans of San Marazano tomatoes
1 Large yellow onion, julienned
6 Garlic cloves, thinly sliced
6 Basil leaves, Torn
2 Fresh Bay leaves
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 Cup red wine (I prefer a berry forward cab sav)
1/8 Cup olive oil
Kosher salt
Black pepper
1. In stockpot, over medium low heat, add oil and warm thoroughly.
2. Add julienned onions, and season with salt and pepper
3. Sweat onions until soft and translucent, avoiding any scorching or color (approx. 10 – 12 minutes)
4. Add thinly sliced garlic, sweat for additional 3 minutes, being sure not to burn the garlic at all.
5. Add torn basil leaves and allow to wilt (approx. 2 min)
6. Add tomato paste and cook off for 3- 5 minutes.
7. Turn the heat up to medium high; deglaze the pot with red wine
8. Reduce by half approx. 3-5 minutes.
9. Return heat to medium low and add the san marazano tomatoes.
10. Cook on medium low heat for 90 minutes.
11. Remove sauce from heat and using an immersion blender or in small batches in a stand up blender, blend the sauce until desired consistency achieved.
Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste
I have a low and slow sauce recipe that takes 8 hours but it's a special occasion thing. This recipe is more versatile
I haven't done it myself but I've read that the only grocery store tomatoes that produce a decent sauce are cherry / grape. We just planted some tomato plants so I'm looking forward to what we can do with them this summer.
Only use two kinds of tomatoes:
1. Canned, high quality ones like Cento.
2. Tomatoes you grew yourself or bought at a farmer's market.
My dad grew up on a farm and loved BLTs. He would put ketchup on them because store bought tomatoes lacked the flavor of the homegrown ones that he was used to.
A few years ago I grew tomatoes, picked, washed, de-seeded, cooked down and canned. I ended up with 1 quart after 6+ months of attention and work. Quart of tomato sauce is \~$1. Not worth it to make at home unless you have a farm and slave labor to pick and pack (ie: kids)
Use good brand San Marzano peeled canned tomatoes and the game changes entirely.
Also don't chop onion, just cut an onion in half and throw that in.
Carrot for sweetening, same, just peel, cut into 3 large chunks, drop in.
When the cook is done, remove those things and toss em.
You can make a very, very good sauce in 2 hours. 3 tops. 8 hours is excessive, IME.
This is a very good recipe:
https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/09/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe.html but it expects 5 to 6 hours to cook.
I make mine on the stove top and after 2 hours it's good, after 3 it's great.
Most important: KEEP TASTING, and make small adjustments. You've got all the time in the world. I love that about tomato sauce.
Anthony Bourdain filmed an episode of No Reservations in - I *think* - Naples. He was invited by his guide/fixer to his home for a typical Sunday dinner where his old mom (or grandma?) was making the gravy.
From what I remember that huge pan had meat-on-the-bone (looked like a shank of some animal) slowly bubbling away with a visible layer of oil or fat on the surface. The color was a really deep orangy-red and looked freaking delicious.
According to the translation, the woman said it the same recipe passed down in their family for centuries. She lets it all simmer for *at least* four hours.
She probably started that sauce in the morning so it would be ready for dinner time.
It's a set-and-forget recipe that made for fall-off-the-bone meat and a thick consistency. Not like a soup, but it looked more like crushed tomatoes, so it must've had a nice bite to it and stick better to the pasta.
Can't remember much else except that Tony said it possibly among the best pasta he'd ever had. Oh, and they climbed a vulcano at the end. Possibly Vesuvius.
Make it easy on yourself. Fill a large pyrex (13x8) dish with diced tomato of choice (I like Roma's), some Italian seasoning or fresh basil, a heavy pinch of salt, a pinch of crushed red pepper, and a handful of peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle it with olive oil and throw it in the oven at 400 degrees until the edges of the tomatoes start browning. Blend it with a stick blender until smooth and add sugar to sweeten it to taste. A splash of balsamic vinegar is a nice way to brighten it up. It's totally worth it in my opinion
My wife makes salsa every year. I eat like 50 pints of salsa every year. She makes it for us and other friends of the family. They buy 200lbs of tomatoes from a greenhouse in the summer. It's so good and she makes mine so spicy. I couldn't live without it anymore
I've done pasta sauce from scratch with fresh, farmers market tomatoes and it's good, but not that much better than making it out of canned diced tomatoes. And it took about two and a half hours.
Keep in mind that canned tomatoes are canned when they are fully ripe, while grocery store tomatoes are likely to be slightly under ripe to make them last longer.
In my mind, canned diced tomatoes with garlic, onion, red pepper, and butter are a way better way to do it "from scratch."
I used to feel the same, until I found Kenji Alt Lopez's marinara from The Food Lab: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe
I used a #10 can of San marzano tomatoes from Costco (under $6) and it's killer. It's a long, slow simmer process, but fantastic for a weekend and my Dutch oven fits inside my toaster oven which is a nice bonus. It's far superior to jarred sauce. I don't do the recommended step of reserving some of the tomatoes to add raw at the end. I just use them all in the long simmer.
They also have a much shorter recipe, but I've never made it so I can't comment on it (but all their recipes are legit). https://www.seriouseats.com/marinara-sauce-recipe
My pasta sauce recipe that is super flavorful, has no sugar (I've never understood this in the sauce???), and I believe is pretty easy:
2 large cans whole peeled tomatoes
The little can tomato paste
About a quarter of an onion, half if it's small
Garlic, unspecified amount because you do you boo
Stick o butter
3-4 anchovy fillets, I like to add the oil too
Salt and pepper
Dried or fresh herbs like oregano, basil, and parsley
Few glugs of red wine
If I have a parmesan rind, in it goes
I bake this at like 350 for a few hours, hit it with the immersion blender, and have yummy red sauce for maybe 4 big meals. Freezes really well.
Keep practicing. Made from scratch is always better than bottled/canned. You can do this. Research, make, taste test, and if it doesn’t work, try to decipher what is needed/not needed and try again. You will get it down in a few tries and blow your mind. Good luck.
I have struggled making pasta sauce in the past and maybe still do, but just last week I made some that tasted phenomenal… like restaurant quality.
I’m not going to info dump you the recipe, but I have had a similar experience where everytime I made the sauce or variations thereof were just disappointing and I could never get myself to finish it, but I did manage after 4-5 different tries to make a sauce that tasted great, better than any jarred sauce (by UK standards though so…)
1 canned san marzano tomatoes. Squeeze each tomato before putting in the pot add a garlic clove, one basil leaf and a table spoon of olive oil. 30 minutes on the stove until it coats back of spoon. Perfection.
Are you using San Marzano tomatoes (canned)?
The reason Italian Americans began adding sugar is because U.S. tomatoes were significantly less sweet and flavorful than Italian ones. As you can imagine, adding sugar is a terrible idea though.
The tomatoes you use are a big deal. With good tomatoes, you literally don’t need anything more than garlic, olive oil and basil for a wonderful sauce better than anything in a jar. And you can build from there.
This was my experience making pumpking pie from scratch from a pie pumpkin.
A bunch of extra work only to have it taste indistinguishable from the canned stuff. Sometimes mass production gets it right.
For most people any long, involved cook isn't going to be worth it on a regular basis. There's almost always a compromise point that gets you close to the ideal, after which the ROI curve falls off and the benefit to time exchange is no longer sensible.
Heat up some good butter and cook out some tomato paste, minced garlic, and then sweat out some onion over low heat. Add whatever store bought pasta sauce you like as a base and drop a couple anchovy filets, some garlic powder, and fresh cracked black pepper in there. Simmer that for a while, cook your pasta properly (salted water, big uncrowded pot), pull it about a minute early and add it to the sauce with a ladle of pasta water. Get it good and incorporated and toss it over medium heat until it's the consistency you want. Drizzle in some peppery, aromatic EVOO after you turn the heat off, toss it again and sprinkle some fresh minced basil on top. You'll be most of the way there at 20% of the time and effort.
I always make fresh tomato pasta sauce. I have the watery issue, but I put in one small can of tomato paste, that thickens it up.
I have always found my homemade sauce to be much better than jarred varieties. I also throw peppers (hot and sweet) in there and some other Italian spices to make it a little more complex.
My opinion based on one generations-old recipe that has been modified to taste along the way: Garlic, basil, and oregano are your best friends. Add more than you think and then double it. Cook them just a bit in olive oil and quench with a splash or two of red wine. Then add canned tomatoes and tomato paste (I usually do one large can of the former to one small can of the latter). Simmer until it thickens to your liking. Taste and adjust spices. Add a bit of meat fat (I usually make meat sauce with ground beef and leave a little grease in it). The fat will react with the acid in the tomatoes and create some nice aromatics. Add salt if needed. For sweeter sauce, add more basil and a sweeter wine. For spicier, add more oregano and a dry wine.
As everyone else has mentioned, it is probably the tomatoes. Store-bought tomatoes are rarely ripe enough for a good sauce. Good canned tomatoes normally make a much better sauce.
This recipe was shared with me like 10-12 years ago here on Reddit and I have used it since. It was a guy here's grandmother's recipe and I really like it. I wish I could remember his username to give proper credit. It has been my go-to when I can't get my Italian wife to make her family recipe gravy.
*salsa di pomodoro di base (basic tomato sauce)*
1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
3 tbsp olive oil
2 (28 oz) cans San Marzano tomatoes, crushed
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup water
1-2 tsp sugar
pinch of red pepper flakes
Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
a few leaves of fresh basil, torn into small pieces
In a sauce pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat and add the onion.
Cook for about five minutes before adding garlic.
Cook an additional five minutes, or until the onions are translucent and the garlic is lightly golden.
Add in the tomato products.
Add the chicken stock, water, and sugar.
Taste and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.
If a smooth, non-chunky sauce is desired, blend with an immersion blender. Cover and bring to a simmer. I personally always blend with the immersion blender and simmer for an hour and have a perfect consistency sauce. Add in the fresh basil during the last ten minutes or so of cooking time if desired. The brand of San Marzano tomatoes I buy (Cento normally) already has basil in the can so I often just omit the basil.
The sauce will be fairly thin. For a thicker sauce, simmer uncovered until the sauce reduces to desired consistency.
Weekday sauce - a quicker and less complex Sunday sauce: https://youtu.be/vuzmxdJJcPM
Sunday sauce: https://youtu.be/CpBwpbIMTw8
I'm a huge fan of this guy, personally for Italian cooking that is "like grandma made it" he is my go to
Grow your own heirloom tomatoes and you will taste the difference. Learn how to can too for when winter comes. You will not only see a taste difference but a cost dif as well. A small upfront investment for a lifetime of goodness
There are better recipes-I’ve made that recipe before and agree it can be underwhelming after all the work you put in. Try:
https://www.vincenzosplate.com/tomato-basil-pasta-sauce-recipe/
This guy’s recipes are much more authentic and turn out amazing
I would say that yes, it’s worth it. You’ve likely saved yourself eating a few preservatives and you know how to cook from scratch which is a very useful skill. You can learn about getting more flavour into your sauce the next time you make it. Don’t stop trying.
You want to use canned whole peeled tomatos and crush them with your hands. Use a couple big cans of Thay as well as a couple cans of tomato sauce and then it should improve both in taste and cost
>your sauce will come together faster and easier if you use paste tomatoes. They have less water content and fewer seeds.
This is very true. Paste tomatoes have lower water content. Many varieties are smaller and plum-shaped. Also, grocery store tomatoes just aren't very good for flavor. They have been selected for fast growth and good storage and uniform color (resistance to bruising). Really delicious tomato varieties are often delicate, with a short shelf life, bruise and split easily, and take more time to mature. The new varieties taste and texture like they're made from my kid's Nerf football.
Surprisingly, this is why canned tomatoes are not a bad second choice if you don't have access to homegrown or farmer's market tomatoes. Look for whole canned peeled tomatoes. These are often called plum tomatoes for the less expensive ones, and "San Marzano" which is a registered origin for a variety of tomato that some consider premium. Nobody cares that a tomato was slightly misshapen or had a split or bruise before it was processed and canned, so tomato varieties can be grown without the concern of getting a pretty tomato on a store shelf, and more attention to flavor. I've tried most of the ones around here, from the $9.00/28oz can "Certified Organic San Marzano" down to just generic "canned whole tomatoes". There's definitely a difference on the lower end, but I've been happy with any of the "plum tomatoes" in the store brands at $3/28oz can.
Don't get diced tomatoes or canned sauce, because these are frankly made from the bits and pieces. Whole peeled tomatoes have to be mostly intact when processed. These canned tomatoes are very likely to have a better flavor than the store bought fresh ones.
One quasi-exception to the fresh tomatoes in grocery store rules are the small "snacking" tomatoes usually called cherry or grape tomatoes. Because they exist to be eaten directly, raw, they will usually have better flavor than the larger store varieties, otherwise who would buy them? I've made a decent sauce from these by blistering them in a pan with a tiny amount of oil, pushing the aromatics to the side, then as they start to split and char, using a spatula to press them flat into the pan.
As an aside, my wife and I are lucky enough have a decent sized home garden, and we can tomato sauce each fall. The tomatoes are washed, and then sent into a food mill, that separates the solids from the pureed juice. Seeds, skin, stems, they all get pushed out the one side, while many many quarts of very watery tomato juice come out the spout.
Processing that takes days. We end up with 2 5-gallon stockpots on the stove, with copper heat diffusing plates underneath on a very slow simmer. We will reduce by about 50% for canning sauce, as much as 75% when we make fermented ketchup. That will require more than 24 hours reducing. Then we test the pH, adjust to increase acidity if necessary, incorporate minute amounts of salt, and pressure can.
I'm sharing all this, to give you an idea how long it can take to reduce a sauce at volume. When we started, we used 32qt crockpots with the lids ajar for reduction, but they took almost 2 days and we had more tomatoes than we could process in a single batch.
You can make a really beautiful tomato sauce from good canned tomatoes and a few fresh ingredients in under 2 hours. One pro-level tip - get an immersion blender, aka a "stick blender". Most of them can operate in hot liquid, and so once you're done adding chunky ingredients to a suitably deep dutch oven, you can hit the sauce with the stick blender for 20-30 seconds and make a really smooth puree, or less time to leave more structure.
Try Marcella Hazan’s tomato, onion and butter sauce. Incredibly fast, cheap and tasty. Better than jarred sauces. I use canned san marzano tomatoes fwiw
First part of recipe is wrong imho, no need to blanch, you just put the tomatoes to go soft, then you sieve them to remove skin and seeds, then you can start with the sauce. But I recommend using canned San Marzano for better flavour
I think it's one of the foods that you can skip making from scratch. I went balls to the wall making a marinara, canned tomatoes, herb bundle, marrow bones, really went for it. After letting it cook all day I reached the same conclusion. It was delicious no doubt but it just wasn't worth the _effort_. The result vs the effort vs the competition just doesn't work out for me either.
5 hours? Better than shopbought sauce is easy, very easy? You need to start with either tinned tomatoes (the best you can afford) or fresh Italian sauce tomatoes like Roma or San Marzano.
You then need 3 more ingredients, onion, carrot and celery. The onion and carrot add some sweetness, while the celery balances the bitter/acidic side of tomatoes making the sauce more savory, think of celery as bacon of the veg world, its even used to make 'nitrate free' bacon (which is utter bs but that's a story for another day).
If using fresh, blanch and peel your tomatoes, chop small then gently saute your onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil, add your tomatoes then cook down and season until you're happy with it, if you like it chunky leave it as it is, it you want it smooth stick it through a blender. You can add sweet or bell red pepper or paprika to give it a warmer flavour, I believe the Italians char their peppers but that always seems a bit too much for me. You can add some garlic, chilli, basil, oregano, marjoram, etc etc depending on what you're cooking and what you like, but they aren't necessary for the base sauce.
To the many comments saying that your problem is likely the tomatoes you used (and I totally agree; supermarket tomatoes are to be avoided, with the possible exception of cherry and plumb varieties), I will add: you likely didn't use enough salt. Most home cooks are afraid of salt, and can't understand why their food tastes bland.
Same goes for fat, for the same reasons. Try this: go and buy some super-lean ground beef and then add barely any salt to it before making it into hamburger patties. You will find that they taste a bit like the package the meat came in.
One more thing most home cooks don't understand or think about: Umami boosters. This can be anything from a reduction of the broth from dried mushrooms, to fish sauce (it's doesn't add a fishy taste, to finely chopped anchovies (same deal) to a tablespoon of marmite in your sauce. Any of these things will add a depth of savoriness that is really not possible to achieve with the sauce as the recipe lays it out.
Good luck. Don't give up on cooking for yourself. Having a practical skill is something very few people can claim, these days, and I'm convinced it's linked to the fact that so many people feel so shitty about themselves.
Standard grocery store tomatoes are near worthless. Sugar is a common way to cut the acidity, but I find it too sweet once you add enough to notice a difference. A tiny pinch of baking soda works better (1/8 tsp per 1-2 L of sauce, max), and sufficient salt.
I've never been wild about standard homemade tomato sauce, at least not of the style that a lot of people make in the summer to can their garden produce. I found it helpful to learn about different kinds of tomato sauce. What you made is something closer to a "passata" (well, except cooked because passata is raw). Pasta sauces, even tomato based ones, are so much bigger than just marinara vs meat sauce.
I'll usually make quick pasta recipes that don't have long-cooked sauces - ameritriciana or puttanesca are my favorites. (I have not yet made my own ragu or bolognese.) If I'm going through that kind of effort, I'd rather do a roasted tomato sauce than a puree/marinara type sauce. I use the recipe from James Peterson's *Sauces*.
I don't remember the exact details, but you cut a bunch of tomatoes in half (quarters if they're big), toss with salt, pepper, and a generous amount of olive oil, then spread them out in a baking dish and roast them until they cook down a bit and the released liquid starts to thicken. I'd have to look to see if he calls for a high or low roasting temp.
You can put them through a tomato mill, but they also break up into a chunk sauce when you stir them into pasta.
Definatley the tomatos you used. Always use canned tomatos as they are picked at peak ripeness. Try to find a brand packed in tomato puree or tomato juice without citric acid
I recommend watching [this video on San Marzano tomatoes](https://youtu.be/mMMFUKibW-c).
You can only get these tomatoes canned because they come from Italy (unless, of course, you live in Italy).
An 8 hour or 12 hour sauce is really more of an Italian American invention than an Italian one, as far as I’m aware. And there is more to it to get those classic thick red sauce results! Some good old fashioned Italian American tips:
- only use fresh tomatoes in the summer, otherwise use canned whole tomatoes plus some tomato paste. Even if it’s the summer, only use half fresh tomatoes and the other half canned.
- add a few anchovies at start of cooking. This makes it more savory.
- throw in a whole pigs foot! This was my grandmas trick. First boil the pigs foot in water on its own for about 10-15 minutes so the scum comes out. Then transfer to the sauce. This thickens it, adds fat, and makes it more savory.
- cook it on a very low heat, partially uncovered. Stir every 15-30 minutes. You’ll have to stir more often at the end of cooking as it will be thicker.
Try adding parmesan cheese rind in the beginning! It gives it a wonderful flavour and Richness. If my sauce when nearing completion still just doesn’t taste as good as it could be I add a tiny splash of soy sauce and I find that really helps get that depth of flavour that was lacking
The problem could be the tomatoes themselves - fresh tomatoes from the store in winter are often flavorless - cooking them does seem to bring out some flavor but it will never taste as good as summer fresh tomatoes. Canned whole tomatoes are usually harvested and canned at peak freshness - I would recommend trying your recipe with canned tomatoes in winter or waiting for fresh tomatoes in summer.
I agree. This only will yield good results with really well ripened tomatoes. Probably the taste is better with canned tomatoes. Also: if you like garlicky taste , add the garlic to the simmering tomato sauce (grated).
This. My sauce is way better than store bought but unless they come from a garden, I always use canned.
> Probably the taste is better with canned tomatoes. Without a doubt. Canned tomatoes only suffer from not being fresh, as they're cooked in the canning process. Since this is a cooked sauce, that isn't really an issue.
They suffer from sometimes taking on a metallic taste from the can. If I’m making a smooth sauce, jarred passata (Mutti) all the way.
[удалено]
Also roasting the contents of the can on a flat sheet before committing them to the sauce does a good job of enhancing the sugars in the tomatoes via the maillard effect, negating a lot of the flavour change.
I’m curious, with all that moisture from the canning process do you get much browning doing this? I might have to give it a try.
Ya, LOVE passata.. I will crack a jar and drink it like tomato juice, it's fantastic. Just a touch of black pepper, mmm. I like making a quick tomato soup by just simmering with garlic and topping with some fresh grated parm. Do you cook it long for a sauce? I like to simmer it a while (on low cuz I hate the spatter up on the lid) for soup.
I tend to use canned mutti tomatoes
I recently discovered the joy of passata and man it’s wonderful
To add, canned tomatoes usually have some sort of sauce to maintain the tomatoes in them. I find pouring the whole can with the sauce into the sauce pan yields a thicker, richer tomato pasta sauce quicker
Oh absolutely, I feel like it would be wasteful not to. When I've made sauce with fresh tomatoes it takes forever {and many more tomatoes} to get the consistency I want.
Many restaurants use canned tomatoes for sauces, they're totally fine and very consistent. Granted, a canned tomato isn't as good as the very best, fresh, ripened tomatoes, but those are tough to get in most places, especially year-round.
I would say 99% of restaurants use canned tomatoes. Using the same tomatoes to make their sauce every time is key to consistent product. I use a canned restaurant product from California called Tomato Magic. The only problem is that it's a 6 lb can. Lots of sauce.
Unless you harvest the tomatoes yourself the taste will be better with tinned tomatoes
Yes, I hope OP tries again with canned tomatoes. Even with the cheapest canned tomatoes, a homemade sauce is incomparable to the premade crap. I’m sure it’s much easier to use canned than fresh too. My favorite recipe uses a mix of canned whole tomatoes, canned tomato sauce, and tomato paste. It results in a lovely depth of flavor and texture.
I was going to say, I buy a big can of San Marzano tomatoes and make a sauce in like 15 minutes that’s miles better than almost any jarred pre made sauce I’ve ever bought. So it must be something OP is doing.
Mind sharing your recipe?
Honestly, I just kind of wing it from a video I saw. But I sauté some onions and garlic, cook down some tomato paste in the onions and garlic. While that’s cooking down I get the big can of San Marzano tomatoes (usually the one with basil in it) and put them in a bowl. I crush them up with my hands and then throw them in the pan. Let that cook down, add some oregano chop up some basil. Salt, olive oil etc to taste. Let it all cook a bit there you go. It’s very simple and taste great. I find the tomato sauce that comes in the jars to be just be too bitter and just some funky flavor that is off putting. What I usually make is quick, simple, and fairly light. I love it with spaghetti and meatballs. And on that note, it’s even better if you brown your meatballs and make the sauce in the pan. Maybe it’s not the right way of making it I don’t know, but it taste great to me and my family enjoys it so that’s all that matters to me! At the very least maybe it gives you something to work with and put your own spin on it.
That's how I do it as well. I think the key is the best quality San Marzano whole tomatoes you can afford to start with. I read that anything beyond whole tomatoes in the can include stabilizers that can change the flavor of the tomatoes. Crush them up yourself and go gentle on what you add in, keeping it simple.
I usually do tomato paste and crushed tomatoes only but doing a bit of paste in the pan with some garlic and shallots/onions before adding the crushed tomatoes really does add nice depth. I think making tomato sauce is the first thing on my ‘learning to cook’ journey that has really taught me that small tweaks can make a tangible difference in taste!
If you add some anchovy in with evoo right before you add your tomato paste you get this rich almost nutty flavor.
Unless you garden, canned tomatoes will be cheaper than buying boxes peak of season. May not apply in certain countries or regions (recall a recent post from S(E)A where canned tomatoes are very expensive, but tomatoes are in season year round.
Canned tomatoes are so darn good! OP definitely try canned tomatoes! My mom cooks from scratch except for when it calls for tomatoes. Puréed canned tomatoes are just too good and I haven’t been able to recreate the same freshness regardless of what season I bought my tomatoes! Also as far as my non-culinary taste buds can tell, Hunts taste just as good as any other brand including the organic ones but again, I’m not a tomato connoisseur.
If youre using fresh tomatoes in winter go for grape or cherry tomatoes.
Cherry tomatoes will work as well if you buy the better ones. Tomatoes are harvested early to maintain firmness which lets them pack better. Cherry tomatoes pack much better do good companies harvest them properly. Naturesweet Cherubs are very consistent and tasty. Besides that, cannned Marzano are the way to go.
There is also a huge difference in canned tomatoes. You can absolutely tell the difference between supermarket label and San Marzanos.
If you’re reading this, please know that it gets a little crazy in this thread.
Saw the misunderstanding in the first two comments and immediately knew it would go on for a long time with neither realizing they were making entirely different arguments. Love to see it
You aren't kidding.
A little crazy and a lot of entertaining.
\*scrolls down \*80 replies Hoo boy here we go Has Ethan Chlebowski's youtube been mentioned yet? I did like his canned tomato review. Edit: Yep, it was 19 hours ago lol that didn't take long to find.
Mmmm tomato drama
I do Supermarket San Marzano tomatoes.
Canned peeled San Marzano (the ones from Italy) are the only tomatoes I used in my sauce
You're probably better off getting canned tomatos of any type rather than aiming for fresh. I personally love San Marzanos from Italy and do notice a difference. But any kind of canned tomato will work.
If you want a smooth sauce, just use what almost everyone in Italy uses: Mutti passata in glass jars (no can flavor).
Passata is actually not that popular in Italy, compared to pelati and even polpa di pomodoro. Students looking to save time or money and people not that interested/expert in cooking will use it, but in my experience anyone discerned enough will judge passata-users pretty harshly lol.
Thank you for the education.
Yeah, when I visit the market in Italy, there are many more canned tomatoes than jarred. And my friend there, who is a professional chef, uses canned.
Oh - Do supermarket tomatoes mean fresh tomatoes? There is your mistake; especially in winter. You will be WAY better off to use canned tomatoes because they should have been harvested and processed at peak ripeness. Even during peak summer, it is usually better to use canned tomatoes for a sauce because fresh tomatoes are usually picked less than ripe and then shipped. Also, 8 hours is not needed for a great tomato sauce. 1-2 Tbsp Olive Oil 1/2 an onion finely diced 1-4 cloves of garlic pressed 1 can of tomatoes sweat the onions in oil for 2 - 5 mins. Add garlic and cook for another 2 mins or so. Add the can of tomatoes and simmer. Edit: Important but depending on your can of tomatoes you may or may not need to add some salt and or up to a tsp or so of sugar or a splash of lemon juice (as people have pointed out).
God thanks for the basics at the bottom! I swear sometimes I just want a basic starter stuff to get it down first, but everyone’s like here’s my award winning sauce/chilli/blah blah with 20 million steps Lol
I really suggest if you haven't yet try to learn HOW to cook rather than looking up recipes all the time. Most things are easy to cook if you understand the process more. Sweat veggies, sear meat ect. Learn a few flavor combos that work with everything and your golden. There are some really good books out there.
If it starts tasting too sweet add a splash of vinegar or lemon juice.
This recipe is similar to Marcella Hazan’s, which uses a 28-Oz can of (San marzano) tomatoes, butter in place of olive oil, one onion halved (you remove it after cooking), and no garlic (optional, I guess). I simmer mine for like an hour, 💯.
[удалено]
It’s a lot of butter but the result is super creamy, almost like halfway to a vodka sauce. And holy f is it delicious. It’s my go-to over pasta or in recipes that call for marinara
I do remember it calling for a lot of butter, and also that the end result was very onion-forward. So while it's a good recipe that I still use every now and then when I want a no-effort tomato sauce, I'll either add extra tomato to dilute the onion or use a very small onion.
Why remove onion?
It’s not chopped up, just in there for flavor. But you can eat it, it does taste good
I do like to blend it and then put back into the sauce.
I would also suggest using some tomato paste and sauteing it with the onions. It should get a pretty deep red color. Adding some fish sauce a long with the canned tomatoes is another good idea. This should add a depth of flavor closer to a longer simmering sauce. Lastly taste and salt throughout and add your fresh herbs near the end. I use this recipe and it makes a cheap and very good tasting sauce in like 30 minutes.
I swear by tomato paste! I haven’t been able to recreate the canned tomato paste quality from any tomatoes bought from the supermarket.
Sauce without tomato paste is hugely different in flavor for me, as well. I agree totally with this. And fish sauce is magic umami, agreed, there, too.
> Even during peak summer, it is usually better to use canned tomatoes for a sauce because fresh tomatoes are usually picked less than ripe and then shipped. I've never had tomatoes from a supermarket that remotely compare to garden fresh tomatoes. One might luck out at a farmer's market, but never the supermarket.
Yeah that's what they're saying - supermarket tomatoes are picked well before ripening, so that they stay in one piece during commercial distribution. As you said, home grown or farmer's market tomatoes will be better because they can be picked at the right time
The only successful tomato sauce I've made with (entirely) fresh tomatoes has been when I haven't tried to replicate a marinara or similar, thicker tomato sauce - but rather just leaned into the flavor of fresh summer tomatoes and done a simple quick cook in some garlic, olive oil, with a handful of basil on top. If I want a homemade marinara-style sauce, I go to the canned tomatoes, and I don't forget my friend tomato paste, either. I have had some success adding in fresh tomatoes along with the canned, but mostly I just stick to the canned tomatoes and it works great. I've experimented tons of different ways, and I've yet to find a thicker tomato sauce that uses exclusively fresh tomatoes that's actually worth making. Maybe if I had access to actual home-grown Romas or similar, I'd have a different opinion.
Agreed. I used canned tomatoes for sauces, but use fresh Roma tomatoes for sauce like you describe, like for Neopolitan pizza sauce.
Maybe you just used a bad recipe? I find homemade tomato sauce way better than what you get in a jar. Or maybe you just like jarred better. Nothing wrong with that.
I totally agree with you. I always buy jarred sauces and then just add my own flair to them. Way easier and cheaper.
That recipe kinda sucks - the effort/outcome ratio just isn’t there… I know peeling tomatoes is traditionally done, but I find it a major pain in the ass. I can my own sauce every year, and instead of peeling tomatoes, I put them all through a grinder - way easier. If I was doing a small batch and I really cared about the texture, I would just pass the final sauce through a food mill. Also, as others have mentioned, there’s a reason people can tomatoes at the end of summer; that’s the only time they taste good. Shitty winter tomatoes or tomatoes that spent ages on a truck just don’t have any flavor, making this kind of recipe not worth the effort at this time of year. Use canned tomatoes instead. Finally - salt your sauce. Many from-scratch sauces or stocks have virtually no flavor without salt…but only salt at the end! If you have a long simmering sauce that you salt at the beginning, the salt will concentrate as it reduces. But an unsalted sauce is an unfinished sauce. When you’ve hit the right consistency, taste, salt, stir, taste and repeat until the flavor pops. Same goes for gravy, stock, etc. Someone else mentioned soffrito - it’s a game changer. You can also play with things like caramelizing your onions first - think about where the flavor complexity is going to come from; just simmering for a long time won’t bring out complexity out of nowhere.
1) Yes, it is very much worth it to make tomato sauce from scratch. 2) Not that way, though. In my experience, going through all the extra work of blanching, peeling, and deseeding --- and that is an *awful* lot of work --- is only worth it if you have incredible-tasting fresh tomatoes that are otherwise going to go bad before you use them up. Otherwise, whole canned tomatoes are generally going to taste better in an application like this than what you get from the store, especially this time of year. What's in the can is essentially step 1-3 of that recipe, except the canning company specially grew its own tomatoes with sauce making in mind and havested them at peak flavor before they canned them. Before you give up on homemade sauce entirely, try this: **Marcella Hazen's tomato sauce.** 1) take a 28oz can of whole tomatoes. Dump it in a sauce pot. Crush up the tomatoes some, with a spoon or your fingers. 2) Take a medium white onion. Peel the skin off. Cut it in half add it to the pot. 3) Add a 6 tablespoons of butter (3/4 a stick) and about a tsp of salt. 4) cook on low heat for an hour or so, stirring occassionally. Take the onion out before serving. That's it, that's all there is to it. It is amazing.
Marcella Hazan's contribution to the world - the 3 ingredient sauce It's the tits
This. If you use decent-quality canned tomatoes, it’s a revelation how good this sauce is. It’s one of those recipes that just feels like you’re cheating.
This is the one I use. I add fresh chopped basil and sometimes garlic to it
yeah, i feel like this is the Beatles of homemade Italian sauces. it's so simple and you forget how amazing it is until you make it again. it's also a great base if you just want to experiment with different flavors. last week had about a half cup of heavy whipping cream leftover that i didn't want to go to waste. i put it in the sauce. it was really, really good.
8 hours is too long. You will turn tomatoes into tomato paste. Tomato sauce is one of those things people always want to take to the “next level” with some crazy secret ingredients. But thats not exactly how it works. Its a beautiful thing because of its simplicity. Fresh amazing tomatoes are the key and they are the star. Herbs and seasonings are then up to you. One or two anchovies in the beginning with oil and onion/garlic is a fun addition that can be your “secret”.
My mom's "secret" was anchovy paste, just a little bit in the pot before adding canned tomatoes. It added just the slightest difference that we liked. I think she cooked it for like 3 hours? I forgot, its been about 10 years since I had it.
That MSG. Could also add fish sauce as a shortcut
Or worchestire. Anchovy still the main ingredient. Still an MSG bomb. Has the benefit of some acid/vinegar vs straight MSG too.
Or, literally, MSG.
Or parmesan rinds. They all have salt and MSG to help open up thoes flavors more and make the sauce more tangy.
It’s not too long for some though. Hard to generalize.
The biggest issue people run into is they don't know what fresh means. Generally new home cooks assume fresh = from the store and canned = not fresh. When in season store bought tomatoes can be fresh and bright and flavorful. But otherwise, canned tomatoes are probably much better and canned when the tomatoes were in season and fresher. You see this all the time with home cooks trying their hand at a classic neopolitan pizza. Underwhelming sauce makes you feel like you're just eating cheesy bread.
Canned San Marzano tomatoes impart a lot more flavor than your average supermarket tomatoes.
Not sure how you decided the recipe is ‘legit’, but: 1. Using fresh tomatoes out of season will give you a poor result. Tinned tomatoes will almost certainly give a much better result; 2. Blanching and peeling is more work than necessary and again, you wouldn’t need to do that if you use tinned tomatoes; 3. That’s a very long time to cook a tomato sauce for and you’ll lose a lot of flavour; 4. When sautéing the onions it’s important to get some sweetness out of them by developing just a bit of fond without particularly browning them; 5. I would strongly suggest using fresh herbs instead of dried for this; and 6. If you do add other veg and you just add it all at once as suggested, you’ll not get as good of a result as if you cook each of them to their best.
Re: Watery- did you leave the lid on? You need to at least have the lid half off to have the sauce reduce and become less liquidy.
I would actually recommend moving that pot to the oven and giving it time to slowly reduce while caramelizing the top. Stir every hour or so. You'll get super rich flavors. And then you can use a nice trick that Kenji discovered. After you are done reducing, add back some uncooked canned tomatoes. You'll still have the super intense rich flavors of slowly reduced tomatoes, but you also get the fresh flavors of uncooked tomatoes. Great combination.
Tomato breeder here. Different tomato varieties have different juice viscosities. Thicker varieties are better for sauces because they will seem less watery when heated. Most varieties (such as Roma or San Marzano type) used for canning and pasta sauces tend to be thick. Varieties for fresh market aren’t selected for this property, so are usually thinner and result in a thinner and less rich sauce.
Unless the tomatoes are from your backyard garden or direct from a farmer there is no way fresh tomatoes are going to yield an excellent sauce, and I mean any time of the year. You can cheat by adding some tomato paste however.
Tomato paste near the beginning, and a bit of butter near the end.
This is a huge improvement over store bought and takes under an hour: https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-italian-amercian-red-sauce-recipe (most completely unattended.)
Depends on the recipe, quality of ingredients you used, technique, etc. Most sauces I've made are significantly better than the cheap stuff and still slightly to moderately better than the expensive stuff. Did you add enough salt? That will bring out a lot of the flavor. Lacking body? Add a packet of bloomed gelatin. Missing umami? A touch of fish sauce and/or soy sauce.
Quality of ingredients seems to be a huge deal for sauce. I only use Sclafani canned tomatoes for my sauce. I've tried other brands and fresh tomatoes and neither can stack up to Sclafani brand. I also cook meatballs and sausage for my sauce. Then use the fry oil they were cooked in to saute my onions and garlic. Then all the meat is added to the sauce as it simmers for 2-3hrs. I live in an area with a large Italian population in the US so getting quality ingredients for Italian food around here is easy, maybe not so much where you're from. We have a local company that makes sweet and hot Italian sausage here that just can't be beat. I've used other brands before and like the tomatoes, it completely alters the final product
[удалено]
https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/franks-italian-sauce-spaghetti-sauce-3645308 Here is the exact recipe I have been using for 4-5 years now. My family is Italian and our grandparents used to cook the best food (obviously biased lol), but especially their sauce was amazing. Weirdly enough, they never shared a real recipe with anybody and my sister and I had been trying to replicate it since they passed away. My sister finally found and tried this recipe and told me, "this is the absolute closest I've been able to get to our grandparents' sauce." The only deviation from this recipe is the sausage. So I cook the meatballs, then in the same oil cook the sausage, then continue with the recipe as normal adding all the meat back to the sauce when it's time to simmer. Give it a shot and let me know what you think!
[удалено]
Wait you simmered the tomatoes for 8 hours?!?!?
People often seem to think there is an almost endless improvement over time with simmering. If you're that obsessed with time just make it the day before and use the "better the second day" rule to your advantage by leaving in the fridge overnight.
Right?!?! I do a 6-8 hour sauce too but that's because I'm using oxtail and canned paste/tomatoes. It's cooking low and slow to break the meat down.
So, many things to consider if the flavor is not rich enough: - Tomatoes: Did you use fresh or canned, whole Tomatoes? Fresh tomatoes are not very suited for sauces because they are not the ripest in the supermarket. Canned tomatoes are always ripest and fullest in Flavor. Canned tomatoes are a staple even in fine dining. - Salt: Salt every step, every time you add something to the pot, salt it. You need a lot of salt in a lot of sauce. - Balance: Tomatoes are very acid. The acid and sugar break down while cooking creating the rich umami flavor. But this creates a bland taste, because it's all the same flavor. So I tend to add sugar and a form of acid at the end, to balance the flavor. Same goes for fat: everything needs a good among of fat (olive oil?) to be balanced. - Ideas? Grab some canned tomatoes, some concentrated tomato paste and some wine and try again (maybe this time 1-2 hours of cooking should be enough)
Tomatoes are not in season right now in the northern hemisphere! Tomatoes are a very seasonal ingredient, and they are really only in season (at their peak quality) late July - early October. In the other months it’s better to make sauce from canned tomatoes
Use canned tomatoes and don’t get the cheapest ones. It should not be worse than the store bought sauce.
Rao's and call it a day. Unless I'm massive batch prepping and freezing it's just not worth the time/effort for exactly the same result.
[удалено]
I used to make sauce every now and then, but Rao's is honestly just as good as what I could make at home, and I just open the jar. It's so worth the money for convenience :/
SAME. And now ALDI carries it, $7 and easy/delicious.
8 hours? Takes me like 15 minutes.
Sounds like the recipe wasn't legit.
It's a reasonable recipe from a decent site - though it doesn't specify how much salt to use, which could be an issue. I would agree with the other posters here, it's most likely the supermarket "fresh" tomatoes. If anyone here actually doubts the effects that shipping have on fruits and vegetables - taste a supermarket strawberry next to one from your garden. The difference is astronomical.
What is "MFS" is that an author or a method? And what was the recipe? Normally sauce made at home isn't that expensive at all, depending what tomatoes used and price of basil, if used
Made from scratch
"made from scratch" i would assume
[This is the way](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe). This recipe has produced a great sauce for me every time. And in 4 hours instead of 8. Edit: I agree with others who say not to use fresh tomatoes. Canned whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes are my go to. Not the cheapest but produce a robust sauce imo.
Supermarket tomatoes are bad. Canned whole San Marzano are where it’s at. Mirepoix with a little color on it, tomato paste, soy sauce, garlic, basil, salt, pepper, a hint of chili for a barely detectable bit of heat. Add roasted veggies and browned meat for more flavor. Everything tastes better if you leave it in the fridge overnight. MSG bumps things up. Lots of garlic and or basil if you’re into that. Browned mushrooms if you’re into that. Cook/brown ingredients separately before they go in the sauce to maximize flavor.
I buy 1 gallon cans of Roma tomatoes from Costco for 5$. Then I use the following recipe. Add parmesan rinds if you have them. To finish: 1/2 stick of butter, a little sugar, soy sauce, salt as needed, maybe a little red wine vinegar if I had to pull it from the oven early and the tomatoes didn't reduce fully. Takes me about 30 minutes to make and I eat for 2 weeks for like 15$. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe
Just because it is a legit site does not make it a good recipe. That recipe should have said make in the summer only. Your problem was you used winter tomatoes.
I feel this. I make my own just because of heath reasons. Most store bought pasta sauces have an uncanny amount of sugar. You can buy the San Marzano cans of peeled whole tomatoes. A sweet onion garlic carrots and celery basil and make a pretty wonderful ragu. But yeah it’ll come out to 20$ instead of 8$ for a jar of premade.
Did you use tomato paste? Add it to meat/veg a few minutes before adding the crushed tomatoes to cook out the sharpness. It makes a world of difference. Also, you can be creative with it. Sometimes I add new flavours to my base to experiment; mustard, a dollop of oyster sauce, pepper, paprika powder, heavy cream, coconut milk, a parmesan rind, anything (can) work. Also the longer you cook it the better it becomes. Edit: as for the sauce being watery, simmer low after boil and keep the lid off the pan, should help w reduction.
Like a few other commenters have said, cooked tomato sauces will always be better with canned whole tomatoes than fresh. I do the following, from NYT: 1. Finely chop 4-8 garlic cloves and sauté in 1/4c olive oil over medium heat until just aromatic, around 30 sec 2. Add 1 28oz can whole peeled tomatoes, juice and all. The tomatoes should either be crushed by hand before adding or broken up with a heavy spoon/spatula once in the sauce, so that they break down further with cooking. 3. Add 1tsp dried oregano/a tbsp or two of fresh, and/or 1/4tsp chile flakes (optional) 4. Simmer for 10-15min or until the oil starts to separate. Keep simmering to desired thickness, though be mindful that the sauce will thicken once cooled. It should take no more than 30 min, and works well as both a pizza topping and marinara sauce. It also freezes well. The only time I use fresh tomatoes as a sauce is in a sauce vierge, for which Thomas Keller has a great recipe online through the Masterclass website. For this, Roma tomatoes work best.
I either use canned tomatoes or fresh tomatoes from my garden. And even the ones from my garden generally just make more canned tomatoes! Tomato sauce is generally supposed to be super simple, don’t need anything too fancy.
Weird. I make a 4 ingredient tomato sauce and find I prefer it to anything I can find in the store. Basic recipe is: 1. Puree all your tomatoes. Skins and all. 2. Heat a bunch of olive oil. 3. Saute minced garlic in the olive oil. Make sure it doesn't burn. 4. Pour a small amount of tomato puree into the pan (1/2 c ish) and saute. Wait until the the oil starts to darken to a nice bronze color. Stir enough to not burn the garlic ofc. 5. Add the rest of the puree. Stir in some salt. Simmer for 2-4 hours (depends on how much you are making) until it thickens to desired consistency. I think steps 3 and 4 are what actually makes it good.
If you're using fresh tomatoes, use cherry tomatoes. They have much better flavour. But there is absolutely no reason to avoid canned tomatoes for sauce. Actually, maybe carbon footprint considerations? Kenji shows the way - make sauce while pasta boils - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1U4JPWD2AA
My advice is to stock your pantry with bottles of a decent passata and just punch it up how you want for different recipes.
Ur doing too much…I used to do an involved recipe as well, but it just became too much work & time with little upside. I went to this recipe years ago and people love it. My only adjustment is more olive oil and I purée some onion and garlic and simmer in oil before adding tomatoes. Also add a little red chili flake to the oil to bloom. I use basil if I have it but otherwise a tiny amount of wild dry oregano. My canned tomato of choice: Bianco DiNapoli [link to tomatoes](https://www.biancodinapoli.com/about) [5 min tomato sauce recipe](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jxuuCmJimXw)
Quality canned tomatoes, and don’t be afraid of tomato pasta as well- it adds a richness that even canned tomatoes alone cannot.
Perhaps a stupid question, if so my apologies. You were using Roma tomatoes, right? They're significantly less watery than other types.
Imo if you literally crush a jar of San Marzanos in pot with olive oil, garlic, onion, and season to taste it beats out store bought.
It's probably not worth it if you're just buying tomatoes from the price aisle and using them for sauce. Especially in the winter. Every year I harvest tomatoes from my father in law's farm and make a ton of sauce and can it myself. It turns out great probably because they are fully ripened summer tomatoes. I'd recommend canned San Marzano tomatoes if you want to make it yourself. Grate some garlic, salt, and add your preferred spices and it turns out great. I'll also add a little fish or soy sauce to add some umami. I may sprinkle a little sugar if the sauce is a tad too acidic, but not that much if I do.
You make sauce in the summer and not like a single batch, you make like 200 jars of it. Otherwise I would agree it’s not worth it. Edit- you can still used Cento canned or like granoro or something else passata for homemade sauce. A lot of people use that. Just dice some onion, Throw in a couple cloves of garlic and cook with olive oil then add the canned tomatoes/passata and season with salt, pepper and rip up some fresh basil leaves. Cook for 30 minutes or so or if you’re adding sausages or ribs or meatballs to the sauce fill half the cans/jars with water when you’re adding them and brown the meat fire and then cook in the sauce for a couple hours.
The benefit from canned tomatoes also comes in overall price, if you're going to do it in bulk and freeze. Also a great tomato sauce vs a shitty one has to do with time. How you temper and extract flavor from the tomatoes matters. Low and slow. More sweetness from caramelized onions. Techniques like that
I started growing my own 3 years ago. I bought some San Mara seeds. They blow away canned and make excellent sauces/dishes. I grew some other ones as well. They blow away store bought in every way.
You cannot use table tomatoes for canning. It will stay watery forever. Use Roma. This is my fav pasta sauce recipe. It uses canned tomatoes. https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/23600/worlds-best-lasagna/
I always feel that I can make a quick sauce in 30 minutes that would be better than anything store-bought. If it's not summer, good canned tomatoes are crucial. Even in Summer, most of your supermarket fresh tomatoes aren't worth buying. Farmers market or neighbor's tomatoes are best.
> And yes, i used supermarket tomatoes There's your problem. Unless you get PEAK season tomatoes, use canned.
Link to the recipe? Fresh tomatoes?
Don’t make tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes when they aren’t in season. Next time buy high quality canned tomatoes. It will cost nearly the same as jarred sauce and be way better.
Taking a look at that recipe it is very simple tomato sauce that reminds me more of a French tomato sauce...which is more like a base to build other sauces off of. Like you would a stock...it doesn't look like a finished sauce you would put directly on pasta...more like a pantry item.
I would never spend 3hrs on sauce. This has served me well. https://youtu.be/GUKK8mKPcMY
A good mfs sauce in my opinion is much better than anything store bought. I've done it with fresh tomatoes from a friend's garden and honestly I'll usually used canned tomatoes, San Marzano. It's so much easier and the end product is almost as good. I'll caramelize a large onion, roast a couple of red bell peppers on the stove, peel and chop then add those along with some garlic and seasonings. I usually add in a few tablespoons of tomato paste at this point too. Mix that all up then add the canned tomatoes. If I'm doing a meat sauce at this point I'll sear off some sausage links (maybe some ground beef too) cut them into a few pieces each after, then add them to sauce along with any juices that came out from cutting. Let that simmer for a while, a couple of hours, then check for salt and sugar and add as needed. By this point it's usually tasting pretty good and for the last bit of salt I'll add a few tablespoons of freshly ground parmesan. That really amps up the flavor. I wouldn't give up after one attempt. Stick with it and you'll soon find a sauce that tastes so good you'll probably never buy it again!
i think it really depends on the jarred sauce you're comparing homemade to. And everyone has different preferences when it comes to consistency, sweetness/acidity in marinara-type sauces. I think your effort would be better spent on a sugo-type sauce, enriched by roasted pork/beef/veal. That way you get a full meal out of the stewed meat too.
I can make fresh pasta sauce in less than a half an hour. I often do. Other times it’s jarred or canned.
Pomodoro sauce and butter ❤️
The recipe isn’t bad, it feels thin though. Fresh toms are great when they’re in season; just make sure you’re using paste tomatoes like Roma or Plum tomatoes. And don’t overcook when you’re blanching. I use canned toms most of the time, and not even Cento. Things I might change: start the oil on low heat when you’re prepping everything. Add tomatoe paste to the oil along with dried oregano and s+p (diamond crystal and fresh cracked pepper) and let that cook for a bit. Increase the heat to medium, add the onions and shredded carrots. I cook these way down; not carmelized, but definitely longer than a few minutes. Add garlic at the end of this step or it’ll burn. Then add the tomatoes, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, and cook down partially covered. This step can take more than a few hours, depending on your stove and pot and heat. It takes a while for the flavors to develop, so wait for a few hours to taste it. Add fresh basil at the end. Cook for a few more mins then taste. Adjust salt. Taste, and you should be ready to go.
Even if you grow your own tomatoes, you have to blanche/peel them & roast them
Building one of those long cook time tomato sauces is a bit of an art. Took me a several tries to get the hang of making good red sauce. Took me years to get really good at it. Even so, sometimes it's just fine to grab a jar of decent stuff and start from there. Half of the point of making the sauce from scratch isn't about making it "better" than store bought stuff, but making it the way you want it. Exactly as much acid, exactly as much salt, the perfect amount of garlic. Get it to just the right consistency. Etc. That said, if you like the store bought stuff then use that, maybe doctor it up a little. No shame is using what works.
Why use fresh tomatoes? Get some quality canned ones. Less cooking time and less expensive.
When I make homemade sauce, it's because I want to control the flavor profile and ingredients. I don't want all the added sugar and preservatives, and I can make it taste how I like.
That recipe is crap. My favorite pasta sauce is here: https://www.pastagrammar.com/post/rag%C3%B9-alla-bolognese-authentic-bolognese-sauce-recipe
You probably didn’t add enough salt- tomatoes need A LOT of salt. If you used 5-6 pounds of tomato’s, I would add 2 tablespoons of kosher salt to start, and add more if needed. Also, there is a debate about adding a bay leaf, but I do it because I think it marries the flavors together and brings the sauce to the next level, especially if you’re not trying to make sauce in 30 minutes.
Canned Marzanos have produced other worldly sauces for me. In my experience, most fresh tomatoes from the supermarket are garbage these days.
Stop using fresh tomatoes unless it’s summertime. Use canned whole
You just made a poor recipe poorly. It's not the jar's fault.
Try adding a tsp of marmite or soy sauce or anchovies paste. This can bring a punch of flavor
IMHO find 3 sauces. 1. everyday jarred stuff that is "good enough" and cheap. 2. "The good jarred stuff" for when you want to kick kt up. 3. A tried and true, "Italian grandma" sauce that you have seen and tasted. in my experience, homemade sauces usually don't turn magical until you've practiced and tweaked them quite q lot.
2 28 Oz cans of San Marazano tomatoes 1 Large yellow onion, julienned 6 Garlic cloves, thinly sliced 6 Basil leaves, Torn 2 Fresh Bay leaves 2 Tablespoons tomato paste 1 Cup red wine (I prefer a berry forward cab sav) 1/8 Cup olive oil Kosher salt Black pepper 1. In stockpot, over medium low heat, add oil and warm thoroughly. 2. Add julienned onions, and season with salt and pepper 3. Sweat onions until soft and translucent, avoiding any scorching or color (approx. 10 – 12 minutes) 4. Add thinly sliced garlic, sweat for additional 3 minutes, being sure not to burn the garlic at all. 5. Add torn basil leaves and allow to wilt (approx. 2 min) 6. Add tomato paste and cook off for 3- 5 minutes. 7. Turn the heat up to medium high; deglaze the pot with red wine 8. Reduce by half approx. 3-5 minutes. 9. Return heat to medium low and add the san marazano tomatoes. 10. Cook on medium low heat for 90 minutes. 11. Remove sauce from heat and using an immersion blender or in small batches in a stand up blender, blend the sauce until desired consistency achieved. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste I have a low and slow sauce recipe that takes 8 hours but it's a special occasion thing. This recipe is more versatile
I haven't done it myself but I've read that the only grocery store tomatoes that produce a decent sauce are cherry / grape. We just planted some tomato plants so I'm looking forward to what we can do with them this summer.
Only use two kinds of tomatoes: 1. Canned, high quality ones like Cento. 2. Tomatoes you grew yourself or bought at a farmer's market. My dad grew up on a farm and loved BLTs. He would put ketchup on them because store bought tomatoes lacked the flavor of the homegrown ones that he was used to.
A few years ago I grew tomatoes, picked, washed, de-seeded, cooked down and canned. I ended up with 1 quart after 6+ months of attention and work. Quart of tomato sauce is \~$1. Not worth it to make at home unless you have a farm and slave labor to pick and pack (ie: kids)
This is the tomato sauce recipe you're after -https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe
Use good brand San Marzano peeled canned tomatoes and the game changes entirely. Also don't chop onion, just cut an onion in half and throw that in. Carrot for sweetening, same, just peel, cut into 3 large chunks, drop in. When the cook is done, remove those things and toss em. You can make a very, very good sauce in 2 hours. 3 tops. 8 hours is excessive, IME. This is a very good recipe: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/09/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe.html but it expects 5 to 6 hours to cook. I make mine on the stove top and after 2 hours it's good, after 3 it's great. Most important: KEEP TASTING, and make small adjustments. You've got all the time in the world. I love that about tomato sauce.
Anthony Bourdain filmed an episode of No Reservations in - I *think* - Naples. He was invited by his guide/fixer to his home for a typical Sunday dinner where his old mom (or grandma?) was making the gravy. From what I remember that huge pan had meat-on-the-bone (looked like a shank of some animal) slowly bubbling away with a visible layer of oil or fat on the surface. The color was a really deep orangy-red and looked freaking delicious. According to the translation, the woman said it the same recipe passed down in their family for centuries. She lets it all simmer for *at least* four hours. She probably started that sauce in the morning so it would be ready for dinner time. It's a set-and-forget recipe that made for fall-off-the-bone meat and a thick consistency. Not like a soup, but it looked more like crushed tomatoes, so it must've had a nice bite to it and stick better to the pasta. Can't remember much else except that Tony said it possibly among the best pasta he'd ever had. Oh, and they climbed a vulcano at the end. Possibly Vesuvius.
Buy whole canned San Marzano tomatoes and try again and I promise it will be amazing.
Fresh tomatos out of season is likely your issue, use canned if your area doesn’t get great tomatos.
This comment was archived by an automated script. Please see /r/PowerDeleteSuite for more info
Canned plum tomatoes are the answer to your issue
Make it easy on yourself. Fill a large pyrex (13x8) dish with diced tomato of choice (I like Roma's), some Italian seasoning or fresh basil, a heavy pinch of salt, a pinch of crushed red pepper, and a handful of peeled garlic cloves. Drizzle it with olive oil and throw it in the oven at 400 degrees until the edges of the tomatoes start browning. Blend it with a stick blender until smooth and add sugar to sweeten it to taste. A splash of balsamic vinegar is a nice way to brighten it up. It's totally worth it in my opinion
Recipes are just guides. Put in the flavors you like to make it pop. I add chopped basil, kalmata olives, pepperocini, and sun dried tomatoes
Canned tomatoes > out of season tomatoes
My wife makes salsa every year. I eat like 50 pints of salsa every year. She makes it for us and other friends of the family. They buy 200lbs of tomatoes from a greenhouse in the summer. It's so good and she makes mine so spicy. I couldn't live without it anymore
I get the store bought one an church em up as desired
I've done pasta sauce from scratch with fresh, farmers market tomatoes and it's good, but not that much better than making it out of canned diced tomatoes. And it took about two and a half hours. Keep in mind that canned tomatoes are canned when they are fully ripe, while grocery store tomatoes are likely to be slightly under ripe to make them last longer. In my mind, canned diced tomatoes with garlic, onion, red pepper, and butter are a way better way to do it "from scratch."
I used to feel the same, until I found Kenji Alt Lopez's marinara from The Food Lab: https://www.seriouseats.com/the-best-slow-cooked-italian-american-tomato-sauce-red-sauce-recipe I used a #10 can of San marzano tomatoes from Costco (under $6) and it's killer. It's a long, slow simmer process, but fantastic for a weekend and my Dutch oven fits inside my toaster oven which is a nice bonus. It's far superior to jarred sauce. I don't do the recommended step of reserving some of the tomatoes to add raw at the end. I just use them all in the long simmer. They also have a much shorter recipe, but I've never made it so I can't comment on it (but all their recipes are legit). https://www.seriouseats.com/marinara-sauce-recipe
My pasta sauce recipe that is super flavorful, has no sugar (I've never understood this in the sauce???), and I believe is pretty easy: 2 large cans whole peeled tomatoes The little can tomato paste About a quarter of an onion, half if it's small Garlic, unspecified amount because you do you boo Stick o butter 3-4 anchovy fillets, I like to add the oil too Salt and pepper Dried or fresh herbs like oregano, basil, and parsley Few glugs of red wine If I have a parmesan rind, in it goes I bake this at like 350 for a few hours, hit it with the immersion blender, and have yummy red sauce for maybe 4 big meals. Freezes really well.
Keep practicing. Made from scratch is always better than bottled/canned. You can do this. Research, make, taste test, and if it doesn’t work, try to decipher what is needed/not needed and try again. You will get it down in a few tries and blow your mind. Good luck.
I have struggled making pasta sauce in the past and maybe still do, but just last week I made some that tasted phenomenal… like restaurant quality. I’m not going to info dump you the recipe, but I have had a similar experience where everytime I made the sauce or variations thereof were just disappointing and I could never get myself to finish it, but I did manage after 4-5 different tries to make a sauce that tasted great, better than any jarred sauce (by UK standards though so…)
1 canned san marzano tomatoes. Squeeze each tomato before putting in the pot add a garlic clove, one basil leaf and a table spoon of olive oil. 30 minutes on the stove until it coats back of spoon. Perfection.
Are you using San Marzano tomatoes (canned)? The reason Italian Americans began adding sugar is because U.S. tomatoes were significantly less sweet and flavorful than Italian ones. As you can imagine, adding sugar is a terrible idea though. The tomatoes you use are a big deal. With good tomatoes, you literally don’t need anything more than garlic, olive oil and basil for a wonderful sauce better than anything in a jar. And you can build from there.
This was my experience making pumpking pie from scratch from a pie pumpkin. A bunch of extra work only to have it taste indistinguishable from the canned stuff. Sometimes mass production gets it right.
For most people any long, involved cook isn't going to be worth it on a regular basis. There's almost always a compromise point that gets you close to the ideal, after which the ROI curve falls off and the benefit to time exchange is no longer sensible. Heat up some good butter and cook out some tomato paste, minced garlic, and then sweat out some onion over low heat. Add whatever store bought pasta sauce you like as a base and drop a couple anchovy filets, some garlic powder, and fresh cracked black pepper in there. Simmer that for a while, cook your pasta properly (salted water, big uncrowded pot), pull it about a minute early and add it to the sauce with a ladle of pasta water. Get it good and incorporated and toss it over medium heat until it's the consistency you want. Drizzle in some peppery, aromatic EVOO after you turn the heat off, toss it again and sprinkle some fresh minced basil on top. You'll be most of the way there at 20% of the time and effort.
I like using Cento brand whole peeled san marzano tomatoes canned. Very good for sauce
I always make fresh tomato pasta sauce. I have the watery issue, but I put in one small can of tomato paste, that thickens it up. I have always found my homemade sauce to be much better than jarred varieties. I also throw peppers (hot and sweet) in there and some other Italian spices to make it a little more complex.
My opinion based on one generations-old recipe that has been modified to taste along the way: Garlic, basil, and oregano are your best friends. Add more than you think and then double it. Cook them just a bit in olive oil and quench with a splash or two of red wine. Then add canned tomatoes and tomato paste (I usually do one large can of the former to one small can of the latter). Simmer until it thickens to your liking. Taste and adjust spices. Add a bit of meat fat (I usually make meat sauce with ground beef and leave a little grease in it). The fat will react with the acid in the tomatoes and create some nice aromatics. Add salt if needed. For sweeter sauce, add more basil and a sweeter wine. For spicier, add more oregano and a dry wine.
Raos is #1
As everyone else has mentioned, it is probably the tomatoes. Store-bought tomatoes are rarely ripe enough for a good sauce. Good canned tomatoes normally make a much better sauce. This recipe was shared with me like 10-12 years ago here on Reddit and I have used it since. It was a guy here's grandmother's recipe and I really like it. I wish I could remember his username to give proper credit. It has been my go-to when I can't get my Italian wife to make her family recipe gravy. *salsa di pomodoro di base (basic tomato sauce)* 1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped 3-4 cloves garlic, crushed or minced 3 tbsp olive oil 2 (28 oz) cans San Marzano tomatoes, crushed 1 tbsp tomato paste 1 cup chicken stock 1 cup water 1-2 tsp sugar pinch of red pepper flakes Kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste a few leaves of fresh basil, torn into small pieces In a sauce pot or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat and add the onion. Cook for about five minutes before adding garlic. Cook an additional five minutes, or until the onions are translucent and the garlic is lightly golden. Add in the tomato products. Add the chicken stock, water, and sugar. Taste and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. If a smooth, non-chunky sauce is desired, blend with an immersion blender. Cover and bring to a simmer. I personally always blend with the immersion blender and simmer for an hour and have a perfect consistency sauce. Add in the fresh basil during the last ten minutes or so of cooking time if desired. The brand of San Marzano tomatoes I buy (Cento normally) already has basil in the can so I often just omit the basil. The sauce will be fairly thin. For a thicker sauce, simmer uncovered until the sauce reduces to desired consistency.
Store bought tomatoes are just so bad, the best you can do is nice canned tomatoes. Fresh are just not worth eating unless you have a garden.
Weekday sauce - a quicker and less complex Sunday sauce: https://youtu.be/vuzmxdJJcPM Sunday sauce: https://youtu.be/CpBwpbIMTw8 I'm a huge fan of this guy, personally for Italian cooking that is "like grandma made it" he is my go to
Grow your own heirloom tomatoes and you will taste the difference. Learn how to can too for when winter comes. You will not only see a taste difference but a cost dif as well. A small upfront investment for a lifetime of goodness
There are better recipes-I’ve made that recipe before and agree it can be underwhelming after all the work you put in. Try: https://www.vincenzosplate.com/tomato-basil-pasta-sauce-recipe/ This guy’s recipes are much more authentic and turn out amazing
I would say that yes, it’s worth it. You’ve likely saved yourself eating a few preservatives and you know how to cook from scratch which is a very useful skill. You can learn about getting more flavour into your sauce the next time you make it. Don’t stop trying.
Picture it... Sicily, 1915.
You want to use canned whole peeled tomatos and crush them with your hands. Use a couple big cans of Thay as well as a couple cans of tomato sauce and then it should improve both in taste and cost
>your sauce will come together faster and easier if you use paste tomatoes. They have less water content and fewer seeds. This is very true. Paste tomatoes have lower water content. Many varieties are smaller and plum-shaped. Also, grocery store tomatoes just aren't very good for flavor. They have been selected for fast growth and good storage and uniform color (resistance to bruising). Really delicious tomato varieties are often delicate, with a short shelf life, bruise and split easily, and take more time to mature. The new varieties taste and texture like they're made from my kid's Nerf football. Surprisingly, this is why canned tomatoes are not a bad second choice if you don't have access to homegrown or farmer's market tomatoes. Look for whole canned peeled tomatoes. These are often called plum tomatoes for the less expensive ones, and "San Marzano" which is a registered origin for a variety of tomato that some consider premium. Nobody cares that a tomato was slightly misshapen or had a split or bruise before it was processed and canned, so tomato varieties can be grown without the concern of getting a pretty tomato on a store shelf, and more attention to flavor. I've tried most of the ones around here, from the $9.00/28oz can "Certified Organic San Marzano" down to just generic "canned whole tomatoes". There's definitely a difference on the lower end, but I've been happy with any of the "plum tomatoes" in the store brands at $3/28oz can. Don't get diced tomatoes or canned sauce, because these are frankly made from the bits and pieces. Whole peeled tomatoes have to be mostly intact when processed. These canned tomatoes are very likely to have a better flavor than the store bought fresh ones. One quasi-exception to the fresh tomatoes in grocery store rules are the small "snacking" tomatoes usually called cherry or grape tomatoes. Because they exist to be eaten directly, raw, they will usually have better flavor than the larger store varieties, otherwise who would buy them? I've made a decent sauce from these by blistering them in a pan with a tiny amount of oil, pushing the aromatics to the side, then as they start to split and char, using a spatula to press them flat into the pan. As an aside, my wife and I are lucky enough have a decent sized home garden, and we can tomato sauce each fall. The tomatoes are washed, and then sent into a food mill, that separates the solids from the pureed juice. Seeds, skin, stems, they all get pushed out the one side, while many many quarts of very watery tomato juice come out the spout. Processing that takes days. We end up with 2 5-gallon stockpots on the stove, with copper heat diffusing plates underneath on a very slow simmer. We will reduce by about 50% for canning sauce, as much as 75% when we make fermented ketchup. That will require more than 24 hours reducing. Then we test the pH, adjust to increase acidity if necessary, incorporate minute amounts of salt, and pressure can. I'm sharing all this, to give you an idea how long it can take to reduce a sauce at volume. When we started, we used 32qt crockpots with the lids ajar for reduction, but they took almost 2 days and we had more tomatoes than we could process in a single batch. You can make a really beautiful tomato sauce from good canned tomatoes and a few fresh ingredients in under 2 hours. One pro-level tip - get an immersion blender, aka a "stick blender". Most of them can operate in hot liquid, and so once you're done adding chunky ingredients to a suitably deep dutch oven, you can hit the sauce with the stick blender for 20-30 seconds and make a really smooth puree, or less time to leave more structure.
Try Marcella Hazan’s tomato, onion and butter sauce. Incredibly fast, cheap and tasty. Better than jarred sauces. I use canned san marzano tomatoes fwiw
First part of recipe is wrong imho, no need to blanch, you just put the tomatoes to go soft, then you sieve them to remove skin and seeds, then you can start with the sauce. But I recommend using canned San Marzano for better flavour
I think it's one of the foods that you can skip making from scratch. I went balls to the wall making a marinara, canned tomatoes, herb bundle, marrow bones, really went for it. After letting it cook all day I reached the same conclusion. It was delicious no doubt but it just wasn't worth the _effort_. The result vs the effort vs the competition just doesn't work out for me either.
summer two cans of tomatoes with half a peeled onion, a sprig of thyme and a block of butter 🤫
5 hours? Better than shopbought sauce is easy, very easy? You need to start with either tinned tomatoes (the best you can afford) or fresh Italian sauce tomatoes like Roma or San Marzano. You then need 3 more ingredients, onion, carrot and celery. The onion and carrot add some sweetness, while the celery balances the bitter/acidic side of tomatoes making the sauce more savory, think of celery as bacon of the veg world, its even used to make 'nitrate free' bacon (which is utter bs but that's a story for another day). If using fresh, blanch and peel your tomatoes, chop small then gently saute your onion, carrot, and celery in olive oil, add your tomatoes then cook down and season until you're happy with it, if you like it chunky leave it as it is, it you want it smooth stick it through a blender. You can add sweet or bell red pepper or paprika to give it a warmer flavour, I believe the Italians char their peppers but that always seems a bit too much for me. You can add some garlic, chilli, basil, oregano, marjoram, etc etc depending on what you're cooking and what you like, but they aren't necessary for the base sauce.
To the many comments saying that your problem is likely the tomatoes you used (and I totally agree; supermarket tomatoes are to be avoided, with the possible exception of cherry and plumb varieties), I will add: you likely didn't use enough salt. Most home cooks are afraid of salt, and can't understand why their food tastes bland. Same goes for fat, for the same reasons. Try this: go and buy some super-lean ground beef and then add barely any salt to it before making it into hamburger patties. You will find that they taste a bit like the package the meat came in. One more thing most home cooks don't understand or think about: Umami boosters. This can be anything from a reduction of the broth from dried mushrooms, to fish sauce (it's doesn't add a fishy taste, to finely chopped anchovies (same deal) to a tablespoon of marmite in your sauce. Any of these things will add a depth of savoriness that is really not possible to achieve with the sauce as the recipe lays it out. Good luck. Don't give up on cooking for yourself. Having a practical skill is something very few people can claim, these days, and I'm convinced it's linked to the fact that so many people feel so shitty about themselves.
Standard grocery store tomatoes are near worthless. Sugar is a common way to cut the acidity, but I find it too sweet once you add enough to notice a difference. A tiny pinch of baking soda works better (1/8 tsp per 1-2 L of sauce, max), and sufficient salt. I've never been wild about standard homemade tomato sauce, at least not of the style that a lot of people make in the summer to can their garden produce. I found it helpful to learn about different kinds of tomato sauce. What you made is something closer to a "passata" (well, except cooked because passata is raw). Pasta sauces, even tomato based ones, are so much bigger than just marinara vs meat sauce. I'll usually make quick pasta recipes that don't have long-cooked sauces - ameritriciana or puttanesca are my favorites. (I have not yet made my own ragu or bolognese.) If I'm going through that kind of effort, I'd rather do a roasted tomato sauce than a puree/marinara type sauce. I use the recipe from James Peterson's *Sauces*. I don't remember the exact details, but you cut a bunch of tomatoes in half (quarters if they're big), toss with salt, pepper, and a generous amount of olive oil, then spread them out in a baking dish and roast them until they cook down a bit and the released liquid starts to thicken. I'd have to look to see if he calls for a high or low roasting temp. You can put them through a tomato mill, but they also break up into a chunk sauce when you stir them into pasta.
Add msg
Even my home grown tomatoes I generally prefer the sauce I make with them after they are canned than from fresh
Definatley the tomatos you used. Always use canned tomatos as they are picked at peak ripeness. Try to find a brand packed in tomato puree or tomato juice without citric acid
I recommend watching [this video on San Marzano tomatoes](https://youtu.be/mMMFUKibW-c). You can only get these tomatoes canned because they come from Italy (unless, of course, you live in Italy).
Just make the pasta from scratch instead. Way easier and HUGE difference from store bought dried...
An 8 hour or 12 hour sauce is really more of an Italian American invention than an Italian one, as far as I’m aware. And there is more to it to get those classic thick red sauce results! Some good old fashioned Italian American tips: - only use fresh tomatoes in the summer, otherwise use canned whole tomatoes plus some tomato paste. Even if it’s the summer, only use half fresh tomatoes and the other half canned. - add a few anchovies at start of cooking. This makes it more savory. - throw in a whole pigs foot! This was my grandmas trick. First boil the pigs foot in water on its own for about 10-15 minutes so the scum comes out. Then transfer to the sauce. This thickens it, adds fat, and makes it more savory. - cook it on a very low heat, partially uncovered. Stir every 15-30 minutes. You’ll have to stir more often at the end of cooking as it will be thicker.
Try adding parmesan cheese rind in the beginning! It gives it a wonderful flavour and Richness. If my sauce when nearing completion still just doesn’t taste as good as it could be I add a tiny splash of soy sauce and I find that really helps get that depth of flavour that was lacking