I have Bourdain’s cookbook, and that is exactly what I kept thinking of when people were discussing meaty sauces with long cooking times. And it is really good.
The book is inconsistent, but that recipe is amaaazing.
I don’t much care about the price, but the reality is that I really don’t much like Rao’s. It’s been a while since I’ve had it so I can’t really comment on exactly why, but it just lacks that rich mellowness that I crave. As I said earlier, there are three commercial sauces that I like, two of which are mass-market and one of which is only produced locally by a small Italian grocery. They’re not particularly cheap, but the two I like best are cheaper than Rao’s.
I might just try that out of curiosity, despite my previous failures at making my own sauce. This is the recipe:
800g good, tinned peeled plum tomatoes – get your hands on a tin of San Marzano
1 medium white onion, peeled and sliced in half
5 tablespoons of butter (yes, really)
Salt to taste (technically a fourth ingredient if you want to be really pedantic)Put everything in a large enough pot, set it to simmer over a medium heat and leave it there for 45 minutes uncovered. Give it an occasional stir but don’t worry about pot watching.
My interest in trying it out is that it’s so simple that there’s practically no way to screw it up, so if I don’t like it it’s a disconnect between my tastes and those of the creators of many homemade pasta sauces.
But I’m gonna substitute Provençal garlic butter for the plain butter. I use that wonderful stuff for stir-frying mushrooms, and adding to reheated leftover spaghetti.
Our tastes differ, I think. I don’t like “rich mellowness” in my sauces, for the most part. I like perky and fruity which is probably obvious by now from my posts. Rao’s comes closest to my tastes. (And they were down to $6 on sale today at my grocer! But I didn’t buy it, though I was tempted. Instead, I stocked up on some more Cento All-In-Ones.)
So what problems are you encountering? If they’re not mellow and rich enough to your tastes, cook longer. If they’re bland, try more salt. A hint is to just ladle some sauce into a cup, add salt to that, and see if that improves the flavor. Then try a little more if not. If it just tastes too salty, that’s not the issue. Are you using decent tomatoes, canned? That’s the #1 issue. If you have good tomatoes, then you just need to cook them down to your taste. Also, since you like it mellow and rich, have you tried adding tomato paste to amp those flavors up?
It was a long time ago and I don’t have specific answers to those questions. However, I’m fine with trying the experiment again considering all the comments made in this thread. Not sure when as I have a whole shelf full of my favourite pre-made sauces, but I will report back when I do.
I do want to emphasize that I really dislike the vast majority of commercial pasta sauces. I’m just saying that there are a very small number that are indeed very good, at least according to my tastes.
Just bringing this up again, but one of the best things to do for people who like homemade sauce is to buy up local, fresh tomatoes August-September or so (depending on your locality) at the peak of ripeness (and cheapness often), then make a metric ton of sauce, freezing or canning depending on your options.
Cook it to your tastes, which in my wife’s case was deeply concentrated with long cooking times, and use it until it’s gone. 4ish months in our case - we’ll likely just not both much until the cravings become uncontrollable for her, and then, yeah, decent (but not amazing) canned to make another, more heavily herbed batches (to compensate for the ingredients) to tide us through until good freshies arrive.
Ha, just been reminded of the famous Goodfellas scene in prison in another thread: garlic and onions in the sauce. Of course, somebody always complained about too much onions. I guess this mafia thing is as Sicilian as it gets:
That’s exactly what we did yesterday for lunch in fact. My MIL was in town, and she’s got a lot of food sensitivities, chief among them onions, garlic, peppers, and mushrooms. So we improvised- a can of crushed tomatoes, some fresh basil, and a parmesan rind. Simmer it all until it’s thick, and thin it out with some pasta water (helps with the texture vs. plain water).
If I had to do it all again, I think I’d mince a couple of cloves of garlic in some olive oil, then proceed as before. It was missing something, and I think it was that onion/garlic type flavor.
I would check your canned tomatoes to make sure there isn’t any hidden salt; sometimes canned goods are loaded with it. I just looked through the eight or so cans of various tomato products in our pantry (crushed, diced, whole, passatta, etc…) and they all ranged from 90-150 mg of sodium per serving, and had salt listed as an ingredient. Only one was essentially salt-free, and that was the Mutti Baby Romas. Even that same brand of passata had 90 mg of sodium.
In general though, adding salt at the end is a great habit to get into. It’s the rare dish that requires you to salt it up front, as opposed to adjusting the salt at the end. You end up using a LOT less when you do it at the end.
The only time I really salt up front is to help diced onions and/or peppers along in the frying process, as it draws the moisture from them. Otherwise, it’s safest to always check for seasoning at the end.
Beans should always be salted up front.
Funny you say that as guess what’s in my pressure cooker right now, soaked in salted water?
A few updates:
1: I really should have thought of this a lot sooner, but I have an index-card box of recipes lying around from my other grandmother, the one who immigrated from Rome. She died decades ago, but about the only thing I remember about her is that she made really great spaghetti. But to no avail; there’s no recipe for sauce in there. She must have done that by memory.
2: I mentioned my plan to my mom, and it turned out that she had a 28-oz-can of tomato puree and a 6-oz-can of tomato paste just lying around in her cellar, both of whose ingredients consist entirely of tomatoes and citric acid.
3: So I’m trying it tonight. I sauteed a couple of cloves of garlic, then added the puree. The consistency already looks about right, so I didn’t use the paste (I might save those for if I use a different sort of canned tomatoes). Then I added another couple of cloves of garlic (I like the flavors of both sauteed and un-sauteed garlic), a generous dose each of basil and oregano, and a little red pepper flakes. It’s all cooking now.
And, the verdict:
1: I forgot the salt until after I’d plated it. Yeah, obviously I don’t want much, but there should be at least a little. So I sprinkled some on top and stirred it in as well as I could.
2: It does indeed have a “fresher” flavor to it, that isn’t what I expect from a spaghetti sauce. But it’s not bad, just different.
3: It’s still missing something, but I can’t figure out what. Usually when something I make is “missing something but I can’t figure out what”, it’s not enough garlic, but I’m pretty sure I have the right amount of garlic in here for my tastes. Something savory, maybe (other than anchovies)?
4: But overall, it’s not bad.
Salt brings out savory flavors. Next time don’t forget it! 
Adding some mushrooms would amp the umami factor, too.
I do this often. My kids don’t like mushrooms, or at least they get grossed out by seeing visible mushroom pieces in stuff. so sometimes I’ll dice up some mushrooms very finely so they disappear into the sauce. The kids eat it happily.
If you really want to amp up the umami, you could use straight MSG. You say you’ve grown less tolerant of salt; if that means you have a concern with the amount of sodium you take in, MSG has sodium but only 1/3 the amount per volume than salt.
Cook it longer, or try also adding in that tomato paste as that has that cooked flavor too, plus adds deep umami. Add water if it looks like it’s getting too thick.
It will take several passes to tweak to your personal preferences, but that’s the great thing about cooking for yourself: make it exactly as you like it.
I use chili powder, not red pepper flakes - richer flavor while still giving a little bite. Try that. If you’re simmering for a while, try bay leaf (remove before serving). Also, cooking a dish with salt always tastes different than adding salt after the fact. Heck, that might be the difference.
For a sauce as basic as tomato & garlic (and a bit of dry spice), I’d go with a healthy shot of fresh, chopped basil or parsley or both just prior to serving.
I’d add a glug or two of red wine as well.