This has bugged me my whole life. Every time I go to the grocery store, the “canned tomato” aisle has a bunch of all of these. What exactly is the difference between them? Are you committing a terrible culinary sin if you use pasta sauce on a pizza or marinara on pasta?
Pizza Sauce can be Marinara, usually is from better places.
Not all pasta sauces are Marinara, as Marinara is just a tomato based sauce without meat or cream or the like.
Hmm. So if you take a tomato and liquefy it, it becomes marinara? You put it on pizza, and it’s a pizza sauce? Or you’d add meat or cream to it to make it a pasta sauce?
Not quite, pasta sauces are many. Marinara is one of many.
Most Pizza sauce is marinara as I said.
Bolognese is a pasta sauce with meat or you know a meat sauce.
Vodka sauce is still tomato but with cream and vodka added near the end.
Then there are less common ones.
Alfredo is with butter and generally no tomato, but often cream and lots of garlic.
Carbonara is another one.
Not really. Most marinara sauce recipes contain more than just tomatoes: typically olive oil, garlic, salt, onions, herbs, etc.
No, that is tomato sauce, usually used for cooking. Commercial marinara will have herbs added, such as oregano and others. Then prepared marinara sauce may have other items added to it by the consumer, who may want more than just marinara. They might add meat, or cream, or additional herbs, or more herbs of the kind that are already in there.
And the sauces labeled as pizza sauce are usually heavier on the oregano than the ones labeled as pasta sauce.
Alright, but let’s say you start with a basket full of tomatoes… what happens after that to determine which of these broad categories of sauces they’d eventually fit into?
Like tomato + spices and seasonings = marinara?
But then further modified marinara could become any of those? Like you probably wouldn’t use bolognese sauce on a pizza, for example. So marinara + ??? - ??? = pasta sauce, but tweak the formula slightly and you’d get pizza sauce instead?
I’m not sure if this is accurate, but AI says that they’re distinguished less by their absolute ingredients and more by preparation (temperature and duration of cooking, for example, and the amount of water added or removed) in order to meet different functional needs:
Feature Pizza Sauce Marinara Sauce General Pasta Sauce Primary Thermal Cycle During baking (single cook) [1] Pre-service (short simmer) [2] Pre-service (long simmer) [1] Target Viscosity High (paste-like consistency) [1] Moderate (clinging consistency) [1] Variable (often thinner) [1] Texture Target Smooth, uniform puree [1] Semi-smooth to rustic/chunky [3] Frequently particulate/chunky [1] Predominant Volatiles Fresh, tangy, acidic [2] Cooked, sweet, herb-forward [4] Deep, earthy, Maillard-rich [5] Lipid Integration Minimal (often drizzled on top) [6] Emulsified (simmered with oil) [3] High (integrated fats or meats) [1] Structural Function Moisture barrier for dough [1] Surface coating for pasta [1] Integration with complex ingredients [1]
Is that generally accurate enough? Not being much of a cook at all, I can’t tell whether to believe that answer.
Wow, I think the main problem with that ultra-scientific answer is that the terms you originally cited are very loosely defined, at least, in my experience.
In my view, “pasta sauce” is the over-arching term for any kind of tomato sauce. “Marinara” is a term to distinguish a particularly basic, simple type of pasta sauce – but that can be among the best! My favourite deli’s “semplice” is a basic marinara but incredibly mellow and delicious.
“Pizza sauce” – again, in my limited experience of common usage – is basically a marinara fortified with more spices like oregano and basil than an ordinary marinara.
Most of the other pasta sauces I believe are evolved from marinara, like bolognese, arrabbiata, vodka sauce, or rosé sauce with cream.
And, in many cases, pizza sauce is smoother than marinara sauce that’s intended for use as a pasta sauce – many marinara sauces for pastas use stewed tomatoes as well as tomato paste, and keep tomato chunks in the sauce.
Oh you sweet young-uns.
A basket full of tomatoes. Peeled, seeded and cooked down will not magically turn into a sauce.
Cooked, stewed or even baked tomatoes are just that.
It’s the spices and how fine you puree it that makes its use.
Commercial canned(jarred) tomatoes can be any number of types. You just gotta try them and find one you like.
Try the cheapest ones first. Then move up til you’re satisfied.
My daughter takes a tube of tomato paste and smears it on her pizza crust, as is. Adds Italian spice (that comes in a spice jar) adds mozz and the kids eat it like there’s no tomorrow.
It’s all a matter of taste.
In early days post-college nobody stood around and simmered a sauce for hours. Our workaround was a can of tomato sauce and a can of tomato paste plus water and onions and stuff. Fifteen minutes total. Fine on pasta. And it came from a friend with an Italian mother.
There’s nothing wrong with that approach, depending on what “stuff” you’re including in your recipe.
»lobs passata into the conversation and runs«
How about red gravy?
As I understand it, a long-simmered red sauce containing some form of meat (meatballs, sausage, pork, etc.)
No. Because you are mixing up different types of categories.
Marinara sauce is a particular kind of tomato sauce. It’s mostly cooked tomatoes with some spices, garlic, a bit of oil, but mostly cooked tomatoes.
Pasta sauce is any sauce to put on pasta. Marinara is a popular pasta sauce. There are also several pasta sauces that have no tomato in them at all (carbonara, pesto) and some that have tomatoes and other stuff (Bolognese, puttanesca). If you are being pedantic, plain butter with some dried parsley is a pasta sauce.
Pizza sauce is a sauce to put on pizza. It’s often marinara. But tonight my husband made his popular matzo pizza, and the sauce was plain canned tomato sauce (contadina). It wasn’t even as complex as a basic marinara.
Oh, honey. Yeah, some of us did.
We did better than some. The first cookbook my wife and I had when we moved in together was a College Kid’s cookbook with easy, simple, quick recipes which were pretty good considering we both had mothers who did all the cooking.
Now, more than 50 years later, we’re easing back into easy, simple, quick recipes and our pasta sauce is Rao’s Sensitive.
Rao’s Homemade Sensitive Formula Marinara is a premium, slow-cooked pasta sauce specifically formulated without onions or garlic, making it ideal for those with digestive sensitivities or low-FODMAP diets. It offers a mild, slightly sweeter taste, featuring a simple ingredient list of Italian tomatoes, olive oil, carrots, celery, and basil.
Had it for dinner today, in fact. Quite good.
The cycle of life, though more of a helix than a true cycle.
I have been researching pizzas and pizza sauces for months on you tube and facebook (with links to other sites) and a great many use tomatoes almost au natural, which is surprising. Americas test kitchen even did demos of using a sauce fresh, not cooked as the high heat of a pizza cooking on a top rack will cook that sauce. They and others showed they merely drained off liquid from canned tomatoes and squished them up, and they went really light on herbs. I picked my last tomatoes in January planning on just cutting them thinly to lay on top of a pizza (the roma variety which died in January) and I still haven’t used those tomatoes. but I thought it germane to add that most sites I was looking at eschewed the use of canned or jarred sauces as too busy and not flavored right.