Ah. When I lived in the US I found I couldn’t stomach most of the premades, but Ragú (which listed the same ingredients I would have used for my basic sauce), that poor despised Ragú, was OK. It may also be the case for you.
I simply didn’t spend enough time in the house to justify either the time and waste of making two portions of sauce, nor to use more than two portions when I happened to be at home. Small pots of Ragú it was, and my own Neapolitan and Piamontese ancestors can go to the corner and pout.
I often make my own sauce but for a quick easy meal Newmans’ Own Sockarooni has long been my go-to.
I recently discovered that Don Pepino is also a pretty good canned sauce with the addition of a little basil and garlic; it comes in a big bright yellow can which I had seen in stores but never paid any attention to because I thought it was a Mexican sauce. I discovered it by noticing the empty cans in the trash at an Italian restaurant. The restaurant also uses Don Pepino pizza sauce, which also turned out be pretty good if jazzed up with some oregano and garlic, even to my jaded preference for my homemade from scratch pizza.
I’m reminded of friends/boyfriends I used to have who would talk about how hard it was to make homemade sauce but they’d figured out a way to jazz up jarred sauce and it was both easy and tasted great! See, they’d add some sauteed onions and garlic, maybe some peppers if they felt like it, and some oregano and basil, a splash of red wine, and it was GREAT.
When I’d point out that they’d pretty much been making homemade sauce just starting with a jar instead of canned tomatoes, they looked at me like I was nuts. No way was it that easy to make it totally homemade. That jar-o-stuff had some magic that couldn’t be easily repro’d.
Tomato, Basil & Garlic Pasta Sauce Ingredients aren’t too bad and not terrible on sugar, but YIKES!! on the sodium. That’s a lot (25%) of your daily allotment just from some pasta sauce.
I loathe a sweet sauce, and historically, most of them had a load of sugar. Now you can find higher quality alternatives that aren’t too bad with some doctoring up.
That said, my gut has decided that tomato sauce = heartburn, and it’s just not worth it to me, so I haven’t had any in several years.
Carfagna’s “The Sicilian” is a pretty good spaghetti sauce. Not sure if it’s available outside Ohio.
I found an excellent one made with sausage and wine, but Kroger didn’t have it the last time I checked and I can’t remember what it was called. Please help me out here.
Mr. Salinqmind likes plain Ragu or that 99 cents canned sauce on the grocery store bottom shelf (Hunt’s? It’s not terrible, there’s one with ‘Italian Sausage Flavor’). I like any kind of Prego. Neither of us like chunks in our sauce, I will pulverize such with a stick blender if I find chunks. Actually, there isn’ any sauce I can say I truly dislike - I don’t like hot peppers added, there’s no need to hot up a comforting spaghetti sauce. Ragu and Prego are what we grew up with and have used for decades. Yes, yes, I’ve tried making my own, but it wasn’t what they grew up or used for decades, so it was a big flop.
There’s plenty of options for perfectly good jarred sauce, and of course you can always improve it by adding your own stuff to it. It’s usually too heavy in sodium but, hell, I’d probably add too much salt if I made it myself,m anyway. I use the Costco marinara as the base for my famous lasagna.
Unless you have a tomato sauce factory in your house, buying stuff someone else made is hardly a bad thing.
Most jarred sauces have citric acid added as a preservative and to brighten the flavor of lesser-quality tomatoes. They bother my stomach, too, but I have no problem with fresh tomato sauce. Or the plain canned plum tomatoes from Italy, which usually have nothing added except salt.
“6-in-1” (Escalon brand) crushed tomatoes are also nothing but tomatoes and salt. Maybe a little too much salt sometimes - but still very good. I have to be careful not to just eat them straight from the can.
Tomato sauce, I’ll make on my own, even if it is a little lowbrow (usually just a can of tomato sauce, some Italian spice, some garlic powder, maybe chop up some spinach to toss in there), but when I need Alfredo, I reach for the jar of Classico.
You, Don Guy, need to try some of that “6-in-1” if you can find it. Your same “lowbrow” sauce will suddenly taste and feel a lot better, because you put decent tomatoes in it. You might even find its brows go up a level or two.
Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. They’re relatively easy to find in the Chicago area, and they’re the base for a lot of sauces for pizzerias here. They are fantastic for sauces, as they already come in a pretty much sauce consistency. Reading from the can in front of me: “Ingredients: Unpeeled ground tomatoes, extra heavy tomato puree, salt.” zoid, buddy, just stock up on this stuff, and add some olive oil, pepper flakes, garlic, oregano, whatever you like, but that’s your base. Red Golds, Cento tomatos, and, of course, your San Marzanos, are good, too, but if you want to start from something with a nice saucy texture, I cannot recommend 6-in-1 brand highly enough.
I was about to ask, is that the butter and onion one? Click. It is. A thousand times yes to this, as well. People make tomato sauce way more complicated than it needs to be. This is one of my favorite pasta sauces, and it has three ingredients (not counting salt, pepper, parmesan sprinkle at the table): tomatoes, onion, butter. Really. That is all you need for a fantastic sauce. When I make homemade pizza, people are sometimes curious about my pizza sauce. What’s in it? Um…it’s just 6-in-1 tomatoes. Absolutely nothing else (ok, sometimes if I’m less lazy I’ll add a little fresh garlic, and I may sprinkle oregano over the sauce after spooning it out, but it’s not in the sauce.) It’s not a curry. Let the tomato flavor shine.
not that im a fan of spaghetti these days but theres some canned tomato water called sauce in various “flavors” by del monte that people love that’s about a buck a can …………. that might be what hubby loves …….
Please help me out here.