Totally OT: Share your favorite recipe for tomato sauce (spaghetti sauce, whatever YOU call it)!

April

In Philadelphia, where I lived for 30+ years, they call spaghetti sauce or tomato sauce "gravy" or "red gravy", and everyone has their secret recipe. I don't have one, because I grew up in New England.

I'm looking for a fabulous sauce recipe -- who has one to share? It can be vegetarian or non.

7 years ago

Off Topic

18 replies

Latest reply was from April

Colette

Veteran

We call it gravy too and it's a family secret, so no recipe to share. In fact it's not even written down. I always thought that red gravy was meat based and marinara was the meatless version.

I have been interested in trying this marinara recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/aut.....avy-313788 . It's similar to our family marinara but slightly different.

7 years ago

cindysmith

Veteran

I once dated an guy who's family was of Sicilian descent, and his dad was a pretty good cook. I wanted to make spaghetti one night but figured a jar of sauce off the grocery shelf wouldn't cut it, so I called Senior and asked him how to make sauce because ragu probably wasn't good enough for his son. Senior choked on a laugh and said he had to finish the other call he was on because it was business related. He did call me back after a bit and he gave me his recipe:

* 3 small cans of Italian spiced tomato sauce
* 3 small cans of Italian spiced tomato paste
* A large can of Italian spiced diced tomatoes
* 3 tomato paste cans of water
* Grated Romano and Parmesan cheese

Start all that to simmering and take one onion, slice it (in quarters) so it opened up but didn't come apart, and drop it in the pot of sauce. (Adds the onion flavor without chunks of onion screwing up the texture.)

Now we make the meatballs. They were easy. Just mix the ground beef up with some Italian seasoning and grated Romano and Parmesan cheese, then put them in a skillet with olive oil and cook them until they're about 3/4 done. Add them to the pot of sauce and let it simmer for a few hours.

It made enough sauce to serve spaghetti to the entire army. But it was also the same base red sauce he used for ravioli, lasagna, baked ziti... (My god that man's baked ziti was divine, so rich so delicious!!!)

7 years ago

Diana

Veteran

I use the famous Marcella Hazan recipe if I want just plain marinara. It's brilliantly simple. I know the butter sounds weird but don't skip it. Sometimes I add some garlic.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/re.....mato-sauce

For meat sauce, I dont use a recipe, but basically brown some ground beef and/or uncased sausage, then sauté a chopped onion, some garlic, maybe a diced carrot. Then add some wine (red or white will both work), some dried oregano+basil, and a couple big cans of whole tomatoes (smushed up a bit) and cook for an hour or two. I make no claims that this is authentic!

7 years ago

Gaylene

Veteran

Another plug for Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce. And don't skimp on the butter! Insanely delicious and totally easy. If you eat pasta the Italian way, the sauce is a condiment, so don't drown the pasta. Marcella's sauce is so good, you can even get away with store-bought pasta!

If you insist on meat, brown, then slice, some good Italian sausage to put on top along with shreds of fresh basil and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Yum!

7 years ago

April

Veteran

I think the butter is completely classic, BTW, either in the gravy or tossed with the pasta just before the sauce is added. Does not sound weird to me at all.

Thank you to everyone generous enough to share! Once you start writing out how you cook things, you often realize it's more complicated than you thought, and I appreciate the effort.

7 years ago

Colette

Veteran

Butter (and bacon) make everything better! Now I must also try Marcella's recipe. I did try another recipe that included butter and it was really very good! Not as good as our family recipe, of course, but it took much less time to prepare.

7 years ago

Sisi

Veteran

Being Italian I feel qualified to answer this! Here we go.

Fresh tomatoes (I use the smallish round ones) - I cut them in two horizontally and squeeze out some liquid and seeds - I do not peel them (the peel contains vitamins) - toss them into pan with a little olive oil and fresh basil leaves - simmer until they are soft - only in the end I add salt and some more raw olive oil. The whole thing takes 10-15 minutes.

This easy, fast recipe is the way I and most people I know (family, friends) make tomato sauce. You can do some variations if you want: you can peel the tomatoes, you can add onion or garlic, you can use oregano instead of basil ...

Anyway the trick for a good tomato sauce is fresh, sweet tomatoes, ripened naturally under the sun (not those pale plastic things ), genuine olive oil and some fresh herbs. Oh, and I share with you a little family secret: if the sauce comes out a bit acid (it can happen depending on the tomatoes) add a pinch of baking soda.

7 years ago

Meredith

Veteran

Taking notes, Sisi! I hope to grow a big crop of San Marzano tomatoes in my garden this summer and will try your recipe!

April, I use this NYT recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/re.....nara-sauce

I prefer it to the recipe Gaylene and Diana recommend because it only takes about 20 minute to prep. I don't know that I would call my recipe *fabulous* but it is very tasty and fast.

7 years ago

texstyle

(website)

Veteran

I do it differently depending on how much work I want to do. I always use San Marzano organic tomatoes or home canned tomatoes. I use about 1/2 a large onion, diced small and sauteed in good evoo (extra virgin olive oil) or good butter works too, a few large garlic cloves pressed and a pinch of thyme. I sautee the onions until just starting to see a bit of brown on the bottom of the Dutch oven pot, then add the garlic, then sometimes a bit of italian tomato paste and then the tomatoes a few at a time as I break them up with a wooden spoon and let them "cook" a bit on the hot pot bottom. Once they are all bubbling hot I turn down the heat to low and let it cook (covered mostly) for about 30 mins. stirring regularly. I also add a pinch of sugar in the raw and sea salt during cooking, and sometimes a pinch of red pepper flakes - I also like to use an immersion blender to blend just a bit - but not all the way - to get it more "sauce like".

Fire roasted tomatoes makes another great sauce and of course you can add a little white wine for sweetness or a bit of veg. stock if it's too thick, etc.

7 years ago

Sisi

Veteran

I'm honoured, Meredith!

7 years ago

Jenn

(website)

Veteran

I usually make my tomato sauce similar to how texstyle does. Sautee onion and garlic in olive oil (I sometimes add some celery to get some extra veggies in), add San Marzano or homegrown tomatoes, toss in salt, basil, and more olive oil at the end. My brother-in-law can't eat onion or garlic, so when I'm cooking for him, I use Sisi's method.

I used to think that tomato sauce was a big mystery, and people made large batches because it was so labor-intensive. Now, I know that the reason to batch is that all the tomatoes come in at once. Might as well cook when the tomatoes are freshest and most flavorful.

7 years ago

JAileen

Veteran

This is my go to recipe. It includes hot Italian sausage.

Remove hot Italian sausage from casing, break up and brown. And a chopped onion. Drain excess fat. Add small can of tomato paste and stir. Add can of diced tomatoes. Add 1/2 cup red wine. Add seasoning: basil, ground pepper. Let simmer for awhile. Optional: add salt.

7 years ago

Dottie

Active Member

My grandmother from Northern Italy added a bit of cinnamon to the butter and onions in the first stages of tomato sauce. It gives a unique flavor to the sauce if anyone is in a daring mood to try something different.

7 years ago

Isabel

Veteran

Wow, BUTTER ? I suppose that makes sense since I use olive oil.

7 years ago

Sisi

Veteran

Isabel - butter is traditionally used in the Northern Italian cooking and olive oil in the Central/Southern Italian cooking simply because of geographical and climatic reasons: the North, with its vast plains and mountains, has always been an area of cattle breeding and dairy production, the South is traditionally the area of cultivation of the olive tree thanks to the warm weather. Both condiments are delicious and you can use one or the other depending on your taste!

7 years ago

April

Veteran

If you look on recipe sites that allow commentary, lots of people complain loudly about the presence of olive oil in tomato sauce, which they see as quite out of place, insisting that butter is the proper thing.

And now I understand that those people are most likely used to Northern cooking. Having grown up outside Boston, i.e., among lots of Italians, I realize there tends to be a lot of importance placed on what region of Italy one's family is from (as well as a little snobbery. Naturally, everyone thinks their ideas about sauce are the right ones.)

Remember that scene in the Sopranos where the restaurant chef Artie brings Tony's mother a dish that he's made specially for her when she's in the hospital? She's looking delighted until Artie proudly tells her, "It's a Northern dish." Then she sniffs and sets it aside. "Oh. Northern."

7 years ago

L'Abeille

Veteran

This is NOT a recipe or a recommendation! but a story.

I used to start my pasta sauces with a base of tinned tomato sauce; simmered for hours with the meat and spices; felt superior to people who just opened a can of Ragu or whatever.

Then we relocated to Africa. Our first month (we were in Kenya at the time) I planned a pasta meal and DH and I hit the grocery store. We both spent nearly an hour trawling the aisles and no luck. Finally DH brought me a glass bottle labelled tomato sauce. So I used that. It not only looked like ketchup, it tasted like ketchup, it WAS ketchup. (Very weird tasting meat sauce for pasta.) Found the same thing in South Africa: that's what they call ketchup. (Could be true in the UK and ANZAC countries too, I don't know?)

So I learned to combine tomato puree, tomato paste, and crushed or diced tomatoes. And then to use my own or market tomatoes, cooked down and pureed. And now back in Canada, either I do a complex from-scratch one (with canned diced tomatoes, our season is too short for an oversupply), or DH just opens a can of Ragu or whatever.

7 years ago

April

Veteran

LA -- too funny. And why not -- I suppose ketchup is a sauce made of tomatoes, just nothing at all like what we conventionally refer to as tomato sauce. It's not even really like what we call tomato paste, is it, though the texture is more like.

When I was in fourth grade our teacher connected my class with penpals in Australia, and we thought it was hilarious that our newfound friends called peanut butter "peanut paste." Until someone pointed out that what we were calling peanut butter was far more like a paste than like butter.

7 years ago

Category