Pasta Sauce

Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 5 min
Total Cook Time: 2 hours

If you ask 10 different cooks how to make a red pasta sauce, there’s nearly a 100% chance that you’ll get 10 different recipes. Some people may claim that their recipe is traditional Italian and that you should only attempt to make a traditional sauce. Some people may claim that their great-great grandmother came up with the recipe and it has been passed down through the family from generation to generation. I will make no such claims. This was actually one of the first things I learned how to make when I was a 17 year old working as a prep cook helping to make meals for 300 hungry and bratty campers at a time. Over the years, I’ve learned to scale this recipe down to a non-industrial size and cater it to a slightly more sophisticated palette. Here’s what you’ll need:

1/4 cup olive oil
3 garlic cloves – minced
1 large onion – finely diced
appx 1 lb ground meat (you can use beef, turkey, or sometimes you can find combo packs that contain some beef and pork…Note that the meat is optional)
3-4 tbsp tomato paste
1-2 cups red wine
1/2 cup beef broth (optional)
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
1 15 oz can tomato sauce
2 tbsp dried basil
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cracked black pepper
1/2 tsp white sugar
1 wooden spoon – not a real ‘ingredient’ but an indispensable tool when making red sauce

On to the cooking…first you’ll want to find a good cooking implement to use and as usual the dutch oven is my go-to, but you can use any big and semi-tall metal pot (I can’t wait to write a post dedicated to my love of dutch ovens….uh, yeah…I just said that). Anyway, let the dutch oven (or pot) come up to heat over a medium flame. When the pot is hot, add the oil, then add the onions. I really like to cook the onions for about 10 min or so until they become really see-through. You don’t want them to brown or caramelize so if you see that happening, turn the heat down. Feel free to stir often using your indispensable wooden spoon. Why is it so indispensable? You know, I don’t really know…I haven’t been to culinary school yet so I don’t have a legit answer…but it feels wrong to use anything other than a wooden spoon when making this.

After the onions have cooked for 10 min, add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for a minute or 2. Then add the (optional) meat, turn the heat up to medium-high, and cook for about 7 min making sure to break up the meat as it cooks.

Next, add the tomato paste and cook for about 5 min, stirring constantly so the tomato paste doesn’t burn or stick too much to the bottom of the pot. Add the red wine and stir well, making sure to scrape any bits from the bottom of the pan. Let this all cook together for 1-2 min. If I happen to have beef stock in the house, I like to add about a 1/2 cup at this point, but if you don’t have any on hand, skip it.

Add the diced tomatoes (and all of the juice), the tomato sauce, and all of the dried herbs (basil, oregano, parsley, thyme) and stir in well. You want the sauce to almost come to a boil…let some nice bubbles begin to form on the surface…before you cover it and turn the heat down to low. Let it continue to simmer covered on low heat for 60-90 min, stirring every 15-20 min (making sure that the sauce isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan). After about an hour of cooking, taste the sauce. You’ll want to taste it before you add salt, pepper, and yes, white sugar, which well help to cut down on a bit of the acidity from the tomatoes (but don’t add too much sugar without tasting the sauce).

And that’s pretty much it. Making a good red sauce is far from a scientific or exact process. You can change the proportions of the ingredients as you like and still wind up with a good result. It’s a very forgiving meal to cook. You can serve the sauce immediately or cool it and save it for another day. Like the chili, it’s even better the next day. It also freezes very well. The recipe yields plenty of sauce so go ahead and invite some people over and announce to the world that you’re better than sauce in jar (ignore what I said about Bertolli in an earlier post). 

Variation: If I make my own meatballs, then I’ll leave the ground meat out of this recipe. I add the meatballs to the sauce when I add all of the tomatoes and herbs and let the meatballs finish cooking in the sauce.