Quick and Easy Tomato Sauce
If there is one thing that any lover of Italian cuisine should know how to make, it’s a sweet and tasty tomato sauce, and once you know how to make a great tomato sauce, then you can use that sauce to up the flavor of anything you can imagine from pasta to pizza to meatballs, and especially chicken parmesan.
Now, some of you might think: Oh, well I don’t have hours out of my day to make a tomato sauce from scratch that I just stir all day.
Not to worry, because I’m going to show you how you can make a tasty tomato sauce the easy way, but still produce a sauce that is full of natural tomato flavor.
Before diving into this recipe, let’s talk a bit about canned tomatoes. Look, as the weather is getting colder, ripe fresh tomatoes will get harder to find, so canned tomatoes will be your best option.
In fact, given that the good canned tomatoes are picked when they are the ripest, canned tomatoes might be better for sauce making than fresh, as long as you know which kind to get.
The best canned tomatoes you can possibly find are whole peeled tomatoes; even better than that would be San Marzano tomatoes from the Campania region of Italy, but those aren’t always available in American supermarkets. With the whole peeled tomatoes, the tomatoes are often picked and processed at the peak of ripeness so they are sweet and delicious.
Now, going down to the more processed tomatoes such as canned diced, crushed, or pureed tomatoes, the canning factories tend to get away with using lesser-quality tomatoes to save on time and money, so they’re less sweet and a bit more acidic. In something like chili where the tomato flavor is often masked, this is fine, but in a tomato based sauce then I think that the kinds of tomatoes you use really do make a difference in terms of taste and texture.
Ok, with that being said, let’s get saucy!
Quick and Easy Tomato Sauce
Makes about 4 cups
1 (28-ounce) can of whole peeled tomatoes, San Marzano if you can find them.
2 tablespoons of olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 teaspoons of dried oregano
1 teaspoon of chili flakes (optional)
Salt
1 teaspoon of sugar (if needed)
Drain the whole peeled tomatoes, all of that excess liquid would make the final sauce too watery. Most people tend to crush the tomatoes with their hands from this point, but I find that to be a bit messy, so I say to dump them into a food processor and blend until the tomatoes are finely chopped.
In a medium saucepan, heat up the olive oil, garlic, oregano, chili flakes (if using), and a pinch of salt for about 1 minute or until very fragrant. Add the pureed tomatoes, bring that to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is very thick and the acidity in the tomatoes has cooked out, about 30 minutes.
Taste the finished sauce, and if you find it to be a bit bland, then add the sugar. If you want to, you can also add some finely chopped herbs like basil or parsley for an added touch of flavor.
What I love about this sauce recipe is that it’s easy to make, requires little skill, and, best of all, it tastes like a marinara sauce that has been cooking for hours on end when it only took 45 minutes total. Even better is that you can make a large batch of this sauce then either save any leftovers that you can reheat for later applications or even freeze.
