Everyday Tomato Sauce — Luce's Noodz

I was visiting friends and family on the East Coast the other week and while I ate incredibly well, I didn’t have a chance to cook. My first night back home I was eager to get into the kitchen, but I hadn’t gone shopping yet. My mind immediately went to pasta (is anyone surprised at this point?) so I turned to my tried and true everyday tomato sauce, since I always have the ingredients on hand.

Ingredients

Sauce for 1 lb pasta

Olive oil
1 15 oz can of tomato sauce
1 15 oz can of diced tomato
½ medium yellow onion
2 stalks celery
1 carrot
2-3 cloves of garlic
2-3 anchovy fillets or ~½ tbsp anchovy paste
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 glass of white wine (optional)
4 tbsp butter
2 sprigs fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried
2 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 tsp dried
2 sprigs fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried
Red or white wine vinegar

First let me say that for an “everyday” tomato sauce I realize that looks like a long ingredient list. Part of the reason this is everyday for me is that I have everything needed to make this sauce in my pantry at all times. I don’t think I’ve ever left Costco without several dozen cans of canned tomatoes, so there’s always a stash in the house. If you’re not already buying tubes of tomato paste and anchovy paste to liven up sauces or stews, or make whipping up caesar dressing doable on a weeknight, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Nevertheless, you can make a variant of this sauce by omitting nearly any of the ingredients above. In fact, the core recipe is inspired by Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce which is amazingly simple. The 3-ingredient recipe is shockingly delicious and ever since making it a few years back I’ve been putting butter in my pasta sauces. All this to say, as long as you have canned tomatoes and onion plow ahead. If you’re missing an ingredient, or several, don’t even bother trying to sub anything, just use what you have and I guarantee the sauce will still be delicious.

Tomato paste in tubes is a game changer for home cooks. Cans of tomato paste just end up going to waste unless you’re cooking for an army!

Method

1. Chop your onions, celery, carrot and garlic. How finely you chope the veg is up to you but I prefer a small chop so the veggies provide a little texture to the finished sauce but not so much that there are visible chunks of onion at the end. If you like that sort of thing, just dice your veg a bit bigger. More important than the size is that the veg is all relatively even in size so they will cook at the same rate.

The smaller the chop the softer the texture of the finished sauce. I like a relatively fine chop so the veg melts away and there aren’t any big chunks in the finished dish.

2. Heat up a good glug of oil in a large dutch oven on medium heat. There should be enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan, we don’t want our veggies to burn. Once the oil has had a couple minutes to come up to temp, add the veggies, salt and pepper them generously and stir occasionally so they cook evenly.

3. While the veggies cook, prepare your other ingredients. I’m going for some texture (which is why I’m using a combination of diced and sauced tomatoes) but I don’t want big chunks in the finished sauce. I like to use an immersion blender to blend the diced tomatoes into smaller pieces. You could also strain them onto a cutting board and run a knife through them to break up the bigger pieces, or you could leave the chunks in if you felt like it.

4. Once the mirepoix has started to soften but before it takes on any color add the anchovies and tomato paste and incorporate them with a wooden spoon. The entire pot will take on a bright red color that will soften to an orange as the tomato paste begins to cook and the anchovies should melt away. Don’t walk away from the pot at this stage since this should only take a couple of minutes and it’s good to keep things moving. You don’t want anything to start burning but cooking the tomato paste will help develop that deep rich flavor that it can bring to the table, literally.

Raw tomato paste is bright in color and as it cooks it’ll darken a bit. We want that since it means flavor is happening!

5. When you’ve taken the tomato paste and mirepoix mixture to the edge and there’s no more moisture in the pan, deglaze by pouring a glass of wine or water into the pan. This will stop any browning and help release anything sticking to the bottom of the pan. Be sure to scrape any sticky bits that may have developed since they are flavor bombs that you want to melt into the sauce.

6. Add the tomatoes, add the butter, and add the herbs and season with more salt. I like to leave the herbs on their stems so I can fish them out later in one piece. Rosemary, especially dried rosemary, is potent stuff and depending on how long you let the sauce simmer it may risk dominating the other flavors. If you leave the herbs in tact you can taste along the way and fish them out before things get out of hand.

I made a double batch so yes, that’s a full stick of butter, don’t @ me.

7. Turn the sauce to a simmer and let it blip away on the stove top, partially covered with a lid to prevent tomato splattering. Congratulations, you’re done with the active part of the recipe, the rest is a waiting game. How patient can you be? The longer you let the sauce go the deeper the flavor. If I’m in a hurry I’ll just let it go as long as it takes to boil the pasta. If I have the time, I’ll go watch a show or read a book and let the sauce bubble for an hour or more. You may need to add some water to keep the sauce loose, since over time it’ll thicken considerably. I let mine go for an hour so I added about a cup of additional water.

8. Taste and adjust with salt (you probably need more than you think) and vinegar if needed. A splash of vinegar can bring back that bright liveliness that long-cooking dishes start to lose. Serve over your favorite pasta and top with parmesan.

Taste your sauce before you serve it. I usually need to adjust with salt and sometimes vinegar if it’s gone for a long time and started to sweeten.

As comforting and delicious as the bowl of pasta was to eat, the best part was the smell in my apartment while the sauce blipped away. Show me a restaurant that can provide the same experience and flavor you get from simmering onions, butter and tomatoes in your house on a lazy Sunday and I’ll never cook again.* Until then, I’ll keep making this tomato sauce with whatever I have on hand.

*Please don’t call my bluff.