I never thought of that! Ricotta cheese is amazing stuff, and I imagine adding it would create something tending towards a rosée kind of mellowness.
So many good ideas coming from this thread. I mentioned earlier that thanks to the reminder from @Spoons I’ve put Stefano’s pasta sauce on my grocery list, but I also wrote down all the ingredients I don’t already have for your sauce recipe. As is often said on this board, “why not both”?
I see lots of spaghettini in my future! Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a drive to get really first-rate deli meatballs, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do! And while there, I can get their homemade marinara, too. “Why not all three”? Works for me because I love Italian food!
So @by-tor , the consensus is there is no consensus.
Taste, taste, taste. While you’re mixing up your sauce(whichever way you go), taste. Put a good size spoon in the sauce(or ideally a tiny piece of Italian bread) pull the spoon out holding over the pan then over your free hand. Cool, tongue burn can happen here, taste..smacking your lips and doing the chef kiss if successful.
After a few pots you’ll be able smell if it’s right. But still taste with the bread. It’s the chefs treat. And your right.
Is that actually true though? Tomatoes will continue to ripen off the plant as long as they’re not totally green when they’re picked.
The trick is that store-bought ones are typically picked green for durability and artificially ripened some to make them red and pretty in the bin.
Canned beat standard store tomatoes hands down, unless you ripen them a bit yourself at home. But there’s not the same element of time bound freshness like say asparagus, which gets noticeably different flavor in a few hours after cutting.
My daughter (who’s head chef around here, these days) makes what we call tomato gravy.
Get a large can of crushed tomatoes. Open. 4 or 5 slices thick fatty bacon.(No fancy smoked flavors) Chopped into about 1 inch pieces.
Dried onion, Italian seasoning, some jarred garlic
Flour. 2 pats of butter
Salt, sugar(optional) black pepper.
This goes fast so have everything ready to go. Pasta in the water. Bread in the oven.
In a heavy skillet,
Fry the bacon until it’s crispy. Remove from the skillet.
Add one generous pat of butter. Two tablespoons of flour stir into a simple roux. Add the crushed tomatoes and dried onion. Stir, stir, stir. Add water if it’s too thick(you could add cream, but we don’t) add the garlic and spices.
Stir, stir and stir. Add the other pat of butter and bacon crispies. And stir. (This will be about 15 min total)
Serve over your pasta.
Dinner done.
(Occasionally she adds a can of Rotel tomatoes with a smaller can of crushed tomatoes, we call this Two-twos, 2 kinds of canned tomatoes)
I start off with sautéing onions and garlic in the bottom of the pot. That’s enough olive oil for me.
Not full blooded but my mother’s side is 100% Italian. My sauce is similar with some exceptions.
I put in approximately one small can of tomato paste per pound of tomato. Then one jar of the small jars full of water. It doesn’t scale up exactly so when I make a big batch it’s less than 1:1.
The key is fresh everything. My mother used tomatoes out of our garden but I don’t have that so I go with canned Italian tomatoes. I don’t care what the Italian cuisine gatekeepers say, I use both onions and garlic.
Start with olive oil in the pot. Sauté onions until soft then add fresh garlic. Add in tomatoes and paste. Add fresh basil, fresh oregano, fresh parsley. Throw in a couple of bay leaves depended on the amount of sauce. Stir in some grated parmigiana. If I have a bottle around and am feeling frisky I’ll put in some red wine.
Unless I’m making it for my vegetarian sister I simmer meatballs and sausage in the sauce. It makes a big difference. I like the flavor browning ads so I halfway cook them before putting in the sauce. I like hot sausage on the grill but not with red sauce. I do like the flavor it gives to the sauce but I only use sweet because that’s what I prefer to eat.
Another handy option might be to saute the onion in garlic butter, and not bother about fresh or minced garlic at all. I use the stuff pictured below all the time for sautéing mushrooms, and sometimes I put a dab of it on top of spaghetti that’s being re-heated. Have never tried it making pasta sauce from scratch, though.
I forgot, I put a paste can of water in my sauce too, and also some red pepper flakes. If I’m making meatballs, I first brown a couple of pork ribs or another pork product with bones in the pot. Then the sauce ingredients go in and simmer for an hour, and then the meatballs (raw). The pork really adds flavor, and the meat falls off the bone. Delicious!
Something my mother told me was to ask the butcher for the ends of pork chops. The part they don’t sell. Brown them up real good and put them in to simmer in the sauce. I usually forget to pick them up.
Does it make a difference if you use fresh garlic or the minced kind in a jar? I absolutely hate messing with fresh and don’t think there’s that much difference. Is there a brand of minced in a jar that’s better than any other?
I was going to mention anchovy paste. You don’t need very much, but it adds a depth of flavor that no other single ingredient can. Don’t worry about “fishiness” … you’ll never notice. You’ll just notice how delicious your sauce is.
The Italian friend I mentioned who makes a fantastic pasta sauce is a firm believer in a long simmer with leftover bones from pork or beef roasts (I forget which, or if it even matters). I theorize that simmering with good quality meat balls somewhat simulates that effect, in that it not only gives you meat balls for your spaghetti dinner, but adds flavour to the sauce itself. So when preparing a jarred sauce with meat balls, I pour about half a cup of water into the jar, swirl it around, and dump it into the pot. That extracts the last of the pasta sauce and the extra water allows for a longer simmer.
They’re not called “TV dinners” any more, but yes. Only a few are worthwhile, though. I mostly keep them for emergencies.
Acidity and sweetness balance is important. I don’t put sugar in homemade tomato sauce, but I may add a teaspoon of molasses, and half a finely chopped tart green apple. Seconding the recommendation of balsamic vinegar, too.
Jarred garlic dice is a great thing to keep in the fridge. You can actually make your own if you have a glut of garlic..which never happened around here.
? In the fridge? I mean, sure, adding salt and/or vinegar to your peeled jarred fridged garlic is a good general preservation-enhancing measure, besides directly inhibiting growth of the bacterium. But I’m not aware that botulism is a serious risk in any refrigerated food? Please enlighten.
Works for me because I love Italian food!
