As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown less and less tolerant of salt. So I’m trying to pay closer attention to labels.
Like, spaghetti sauce. The nutrition facts on the side of a jar says that it has 20% of the RDA of sodium per serving. OK, not bad… except that’s for 5 servings per container. I usually get two servings out of a jar of spaghetti sauce. So that means that my actual serving of spaghetti is hitting me with half of my RDA of salt.
I checked other brands in the store. The name brands, the generics, the fancy gourmet brands-- They’re all about the same amount of salt.
But spaghetti sauce is mostly just tomatoes. What if I just bought a can of diced tomatoes, heated that up in a pot, and added some oregano and basil? Does that make a decent sauce, or is there something else special I need to do? I don’t want to go overboard and create a new family heirloom recipe, or anything, but would it make for decent bachelor chow?
Yes, it would. Specially if you made a soffritto with some onions first. Cook the tomatoes as slow as your time/hunger permits, and you will be dandy. Rosemary and thyme will be good too.
ETA: Oh! And you can’t go wrong with some pepper and podered paprika too.
I would start with crushed tomatoes (that’s my preference, but you can use whole tomatoes blitzed down or diced tomatos, too. The crushed give me the texture I like for a lot of sauces, and if you want the texture of something jarred, this is the easiest way. Then again, sometimes I am in the mood for chunks instead.) Passata will work excellently, as well. Cento has “All-in-1” crushed tomatoes that I typically use. (I used to use a brand called Escalon 6-in-1 tomatoes, but since Covid, it’s just disappeared around here.)
After that you don’t have to be too complicated. Just some good olive oil with a bit of onions or garlic (be careful not to burn the garlic), then a bit of oregano and your tomatoes will make a perfectly good sauce. There’s a somewhat well-known Marcella Hazan recipe that is just butter, tomatoes, and half an onion that is delicious.
But it’s not going to taste like your jarred sauces which are really tarted up with herbs (and I avoid those because none of them taste right to me except for the pricey Rao’s brand.)
ETA: Ninja’ed by @silenus! But I gave a link that doesn’t require an NYT subscription.
That’s often how I do it. finely chop some pepper and onion, minced garlic, in with the tinned toms and season with salt and pepper (and a little sugar) plus whatever herbs you fancy (oregano, bay leaf etc). Simmer and reduce, whack a bit of chilli in there for something more akin to an arrabiata, splash of balsamic if you are feeling cosmopolitan.
Simple and cheap and you get to control your own salt intake.
Then ruin your best intentions by sprinkling with more parmesan than is medically advisable.
I am so pissed off with the NYT! I am a subscriber and I still can’t see the recipes, they are paywalled. Recipes demand an extra subscription on top of the one I have! Next they will introduce a subsciption for sports (oh, wait: they have that too! they call it The Athletic or so. GRRRR!), another for economy, another for international affairs… Damn them! One day soon I will cancel my primary subscription too.
IMHO and limited experience, no, that would not work. Spaghetti sauce is a lot like pizza – you can list the basic ingredients, but the way they’re combined and prepared is quite literally an art form that creates (or fails to create) all kinds of subtleties. I say this as someone who loves a good pasta sauce and who has tried – and failed – to make my own, even though carefully following recipes. But I’m super-picky and dislike the vast majority of commercial sauces. I’ve found a very few that I really like, and really treasure them.
OTOH, you might have more success than I did – or perhaps might be less picky. But at the very least, you’ll need a decent recipe and care in preparation, such as lots of slow simmering, not just throwing together some tomatoes and spices. Also keep in mind that there’s a reason for the salt – you might want to go easy on it, but shouldn’t eliminate it entirely.
OK, just how slowly are we simmering, here? My usual procedure for a meal of spaghetti is to put the sauce pot on for just long enough to warm it up. Are we talking a half-hour, or are we talking “to get it right, start the previous evening”?
And I probably wouldn’t be using onions… I love them, but something about my apartment (humidity? Temperature variations? I dunno) makes onions have very short shelf life. Are they essential to making a good sauce?
Cook the diced tomatoes long enough at relatively low temperature together with a couple big dollops of canned tomato paste, minced garlic, onions, a little olive oil and spices (especially basil and oregano) and you’ll get a very edible bachelor spaghetti sauce. Optional: add a little Momofuku Chili Crunch to provide heat if desired. You can probably get enough salt by adding some to the water used for boiling the spaghetti.
This is odd, as pasta sauces are mostly pretty straightforward. But you do have to start with quality ingredients. My favorite sauce is just olive oil, garlic, hot peppers, and tomato (arrabiata). There’s no need to be complicated, and the sauces I’ve had in Italy have been pretty straightforward compared to the jarred sauces you get here. The biggest hint is NOT to use fresh tomatoes, unless you know you have some goddamned ripe and juicy and fruity tomatoes at hand. I never see tomatoes worthy for a sauce at my supermarket. Ever.
Onions or garlic? You are the one who thaught me that no Italian recipe has both! You know what? For tomato sauce I still use both, and it is good. Careful not to burn one or the other, of course.
Nice to see what generates quick answers here in the SDMB: Tomato sauce.
Yes, I said onion OR garlic for that reason, but you are absolutely welcome to add both. They don’t typically have both, but there are many regions in Italy, and I’m sure some (like Sicily, I would guess) do both.
I had a friend of Italian descent who made a very fine pasta sauce, and he claimed that one of his secret ingredients was to include a big beef bone in the long simmering process. Just an example of one of the many tricks and subtleties involved.
Diced tomatoes are treated with a chemical, calcium chloride I believe, that causes them to hold their diced shape and not dissolve into sauce as easily. Which is fine if you want very chunky sauce. When I make spaghetti sauce I use a combination of canned crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes.
Sauté some diced onion and garlic in olive oil, also diced bell pepper if you like. Any combo of herbs like basil, thyme, and oregano (too much oregano and it’ll taste like pizza sauce, which may not be a bad thing). Add tomato products and cook a little longer. Bit of black pepper, some red pepper flake perhaps.
Most cans of tomatoes have salt, too. Because salt is a preservative; it is in most canned goods. But you can find ones marked low sodium and try that.
Or you could start with fresh tomatoes and add salt only at the end, if you need any. That’s my preferred method. I make a huge batch in September, enough to last through the winter and then portion it out and freeze it. Spaghetti sauce freezes well.
