I’ve been recently learning to cook better, and I believe a home made pasta sauce is just as easy, and cheaper, then buying bottled sauces. It’s wayyyy better too. Like there’s a lot more depth and flavor to it. I’ve always found bottled sauces to be kind of bland and the same. All of these flavor options, but to me, I could hardly tell the difference, outside of something like a truffle pasta sauce or something crazy.
You get the bottled sauce, you dump it in the pan, you heat it up. So easy. But, like, it’s just as easy with a home made sauce.
Start with a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, dump it into a pan, simmer. You can then add your other ingredients, spices, to shape the flavor profile a little more. I honestly just wing it. You let that simmer for like at least 30 minutes, and you’ve already got a better and cheaper sauce.
I’ll do mine for about 3 hours, get it really nice and rich, deep in color. So good.
I like to brown up some meats, like fancy hotdogs, ground beef, pork. Do that in a stainless steel pan to really develop those flavors. I use tomato paste too, and if you don’t want to use meat you can use just tomato paste. The point is getting some of that browning, the maillard reaction? I dump that into the simmering sauce, then I’ll de-glaze the pan and dump that in too.
If I have fresh onions or garlic on hand, I’ll work with those, but otherwise I’m not above just the dry spice versions of, along with whatever other spices I think might be good. I really wing it on the spices just based on what I have going on.
For the pasta, I’ve been doing spaghetti. I’ll use chicken bullion in the water. I really want to try and get as much flavor into those noddles as I can. I time the pasta to finish around that 3 hour mark, because I want it to all come together in the end. By this time the pasta sauce should be very deep, rick, thick, and just punching you in the face with flavor. I’ll add some of the pasta water into the sauce to help thin it up a little. I drain the pasta, then combine the pasta and the sauce, and simmer it for a little bit longer. Let all those flavors leach their way into the pasta. Once it’s done, I add some butter and mix it in, give a little creaminess on top
It’s super good. Does well as left-overs too. Very cheap! Like in today’s world, it’s a great struggle meal that doesn’t taste like a struggle meal.
