Do you use marinara sauce (or gravy as we Italian-Americans who grew up in the New York area were raised to call it) from a jar or can?
If so, for the love of all that is good and decent in this world, please stop!
There is simply no good reason to ever use store-bought marinara sauce. Making your own from scratch is super simple and it tastes sooooo much better. And it doesn’t really cost any more than the store bought crap either. So please, allow me to tell you how to make it.
First, before we begin, you must understand that there are as many different ways to make marinara sauce as there are people making it. There are so many individual touches you can put on your marinara sauce, that there really is no one single way to do it. So, let me give you the basics and let you go from there. Here we go.
Begin with olive oil. Put the oil in a sauce pan that has already been warming for a few minutes on medium heat. Next, add some chopped onion. I usually use yellow onion, but you can use red or white. Again, there is not right or wrong way to do this. Let the onion soften for a few minutes until it begins to get translucent. Now, add some chopped garlic. How much is up to you, same goes for the onion. This will, in part, depend upon how much sauce you plan to make. Add salt and pepper to the onions and garlic. If you like your marinara sauce spicy, you can add some red pepper flakes. Adding them now will help flavor the oil which will help carry that spice through the sauce.
Okay, now it is time to add tomatoes and turn this into a sauce. I like to use canned crushed tomatoes. But you don’t have to. You can use whole canned tomatoes and crush them yourself as the sauce cooks. You can also use a combination of tomato sauce, tomato paste and water. But I wouldn’t if I were you. It doesn’t come out as good in my humble opinion. Now, season your sauce with more salt and pepper to taste.
Well, there you have it. You now have a basic marinara sauce. You can use it as is and it will be better than almost any of the canned crap. If you are like me, however, you don’t want to stop there. You probably want to add some more depth of flavor. This is where you can let yourself run free. Add what you like.
If you want to keep it traditional, add some dried Italian herbs. These mixtures usually contain basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram and sometimes rosemary and a few others. Adding fresh herbs is even better, but it will start getting expensive if you use all fresh herbs (if you can even find them). Tip: If you can only use one fresh herb, go with basil. Adding fresh basil makes a huge difference, and it is usually the easiest fresh herb to find in your grocery store. It can also be easily grown at home, but more about that another time.
Alright, now you have a simple classic marinara sauce. But, as I said, you can get creative and create your sauce to taste based on what you like. For example, some people add some diced carrot for a little bit of sweetness. If so, add it at the beginning before you add the onions and garlic. It needs time to cook down in order to become soft and sweet. You can also add lots of other ingredients after you add the tomatoes. A few things that are commonly added are olives (green or black), capers, roasted garlic, cheese (a hard grated Italian cheese will incorporate nicely into the sauce), red wine, and anything else you might like to flavor your sauce.
There is another important ingredient for marinara sauce that we cannot go without discussing… meat! Of course, there is no more classic food combination than spaghetti and meatballs. But when it comes to adding meat to your sauce, meatballs are not the only game in town. You can use any meat. By the way, you do cook your meatballs in your sauce, don’t you? If you do not, please stop reading and smack yourself in the head! Okay, now let us move on. By the way, I’m sorry about the smack in the head thing, but it had to be done. Of course you cook your meatballs in the sauce! First you fry them in a pan with some olive oil, or you bake them in the oven, and then you add them to your sauce to simmer for a while. Doing this allows the meatballs to flavor your sauce.
So now you will be cooking your meatballs in the sauce, right? Good. But remember, it doesn’t have to just be meatballs. You can use any other meat. Cuts of beef, pork, chicken, bison, elk, venison. Hell, you could even use hippopotamus in a pinch! What you do is simple. Take your meat. Season both sides with salt and pepper (always season your food!) and brown it in a pan on medium to medium-high heat. You want to get a nice sear on the outside of your meat, but it does not need to cook all the way through. Once you get the meat seared on both sides, add it to your sauce and simmer. The meat will finish cooking in your sauce. Simmer for at least an hour or more. When you do this, even the most tough cuts of meat will become fall-apart tender. This allows you to use cheap cuts of meat that are too tough to do anything else with besides making stew or something. A great way to eat meat on the cheap!
Okay, I have written long enough. I have given you the basics. You know more than enough to begin making fantastic marinara sauce and pasta dishes from scratch. So start cooking. And by the way, please bookmark this website. I will cover much more in future articles. Also, please subscribe for free to our YouTube channel and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Happy cooking, my friends!