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BASIC MARINARA SAUCE
Makes a large pot
By Dennis W. Viau; modified from my mother’s recipe.
There are countless recipes for this standard Italian pasta
sauce. This is the basic sauce I make, based on my mother’s
recipe. Both her parents were Italian immigrants and
although my mother’s cooking was, at times, risky, she
made an excellent spaghetti sauce. There are likely many
Italian cooks who would argue that their marinara sauce
is the true Italian marinara sauce, but feel free to make
variations according to your preferences. Creativity is one of the joys of cooking. One requisite: Try to
find imported Italian San Marzano tomatoes for an authentic flavor. The flavor really is the best.
The following ingredients make a large pot of sauce. If you don’t want to use a #10 can of tomatoes, buy
the smaller cans sold in the grocery store and adjust the amount of other ingredients accordingly.
Ingredients:
3 large cans (28 oz./793g to 35 oz./992g each) or 1 #10 can (90 oz./2.55kg) San Marzano tomatoes
1 cup packed fresh basil; stems removed
½ cup packed fresh Italian parsley; stems removed
6 to 8 cloves garlic; whole
1 medium onion; chopped and caramelized (see below)*
1 6-ounce (170g) can tomato paste
1 tablespoon dry oregano flakes
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
½ tablespoon salt
Directions:
To caramelize the chopped onion, place it in a large cooking pot over medium heat with a little olive oil
(about 2 tablespoons) and sauté, stirring often, until a golden brown, about 10 to 20 minutes).
Place some of the tomatoes, basil, parsley, garlic, and caramelized onion in a blender and blend for 6 to
8 seconds. Pour into the cooking pot. Continue until all the ingredients are blended. Place the pan over
medium-high heat. Add the tomato paste and oregano and stir to blend. For a spicier sauce, add the
optional red pepper flakes.
Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer, partially covered, for about 1½ hours, stirring often.
Use in your favorite recipe.
This sauce can be made a day or two in advance—in fact, the flavor improves if stored overnight in the
refrigerator. Allow to cool before storing. It also freezes well.
* Rather than adding sugar to my sauce (many people do) I caramelize the onion, which concentrates the
sugar in the onion. Not only does this add a little sweetness, it also adds more complexity to the flavor.
The Step By Step guide begins on the following page.
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20101220
STEP-BY-STEP
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These are the ingredients I use to make my marinara sauce. Two cans of tomatoes are shown here. The
smaller one is the size you are more likely to find in a grocery store, 35 oz. (992g). The larger can, a #10
institutional size can, 90 oz. (2.55kg), is the size I buy in the Italian market down in the city. The most
important point is that these are genuine San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy.
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This is where I vary from a lot of recipes that put chopped fresh onion in the sauce. I find that those
recipes produce a sauce with a disagreeable raw onion flavor, even after it is cooked for an hour or more.
I buy the large 10‑pound bag of onions at the warehouse store and spend part of a day chopping and
caramelizing all the onions (with all the windows open and fans running). The whole project takes 3 to
4 hours. Then I divide the caramelized onions into 20 portions (each about ½ onion because 10 large
onions come in the bag) and seal them in plastic bags. I store them in the freezer for later use. It’s a lot
of work up front, but it makes cooking so much easier when I can simply reach into the freezer to get
caramelized onions as I need them. Caramelized onions are sweet, which adds sugar to the sauce.
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3
Here’s a useful trick I learned from an Italian chef—use a blender rather than chopping and mincing
everything by hand. Working a little at a time, I put some of each ingredient in the blender and blend
together for about 8 seconds. Then dump the contents into your cooking pot and blend another batch. It
only takes minutes. Note: The tomato paste goes into the pot, not the blender, as it’s already smooth.
4
Here is my sauce on the stove, just coming to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for about
1½ hours, stirring often. To help protect the bottom from scorching, which would ruin the flavor of
the sauce, I remove a grate from one of the other burners and stack it on top of the grate on which I’m
cooking the sauce. This raises the pot a little more above the heat.
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4
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Finally, here is my cooked and cooled sauce. I put it in ziplock bags and store it in the freezer for later use.
Like the caramelized onion, it makes for a convenient spaghetti sauce. Move one to the refrigerator to
thaw a day or two before you know you’ll need it.
Conclusion
Nothing beats the flavor of homemade spaghetti sauce, although there are some jarred sauces that have
a good and useful flavor. Sometimes I add a jar of store-bought sauce to my homemade sauce before I
put the pot on the stove to cook. It adds a little more complexity to the flavor. In a pinch, I have even
combined two different brands of jarred sauce in a large jar and called that “homemade” when I needed
a sauce for a dish in which the sauce wouldn’t be the predominant flavor, such as when making Eggplant
Parmesan.
Having some “basics” recipes in your cooking repertoire will build a good foundation for many delicious
recipes to come.
26. Copyright 2010 The Mobile Home Gourmet, MobileHomeGourmet.com, all rights reserved.