MARINARA SAUCE

Marinara: a simple classic

What is Marinara Sauce

Marinara is a meatless tomato sauce. It can be the beginning of countless classic Italian meals. It’s a great pizza sauce and perfect for your baked parmesan dishes. But you don’t have to look further to make Marinara into a meal, than spooning it over your favorite pasta. You won’t get up from eating a plate of pasta with homemade Marinara sauce, sprinkled with freshly grated cheese, and walk away thinking anything was missing from this easiest of meals. Add a store bought loaf of Italian or French bread warmed up in the oven and you have a feast. Even better, with that loaf of Italian bread you can make your own garlic bread with our easy recipe Make your own Garlic Bread. Whatever you serve it with, Marinara proves over and over again that you don’t need meat to make a delicious Italian meal.

Marinara is more than just versatile, it’s good for you

When we think of healthy meals made with plant based ingredients, we don’t usually think of sauces, but marinara is an exception. Not only are all the ingredients plant based, they are loaded with nutritionally important vitamins and minerals. The two main ingredients, tomato and olive oil offer most of the nutritional punch, but onion, garlic and herbs hold their own in that department too.

Making Marinara at home

So, why would you bother to make Marinara at home, instead of using a bottle of premade sauce?

Here’s why:

Let’s start with money

If you are like most of us, you are making food decisions based on cost. But here’s the thing, the price tag doesn’t tell the whole story. This recipe calls for a 28 ounce can of tomatoes. which is the major ingredient and represents the bulk of the cost to make it. Those cans aren’t cheap, but compare those 28 ounces to the number of ounces you get in the bottled sauce. If you are getting 28 ounces of bottled sauce for less than a can of ground peeled plum tomatoes, beware. I can’t imagine what you are going to find on the ingredients list on that label.

Here’s something pretty interesting to notice. The brand names that you may associate with higher quality, will come in a bottle that might be as tall as some others, but the bottle will be thinner or taper in the middle or have beveled edges. Those changes to the bottle reduce how much sauce it holds. The average person won’t pick up on that. That’s what marketing is all about.

What’s in the bottle?

Bottled tomato sauces are a processed food, very processed. They have ingredients in them that make no sense to us, like high fructose corn syrup. Worse yet, some ingredients are not food items at all, but chemicals. And while checking out the label, realize that the marketing research used to lead us to believe there is more sauce in the bottle, also has determined that if a brand name is Italian, or has “nana’s” picture on the label, or the label looks more sophisticated, the average consumer will pay more. It doesn’t mean it was made with more care than any other bottle of sauce. It isn’t like homemade no matter what is implied.

It’s no secret that processed foods do not provide the stuff we need to maintain a healthy diet. But we buy it anyway, and we all know why. Time. We think that this kind of “convenience” food product will save us time. Well we have good news for you.

Marinara sauce takes minutes to make

It only takes about 15 minutes more to make your own homemade Marinara sauce than it does to open a bottle of sauce and heat it up. It’s well worth the extra time. We promise. And consider this, if you make more than you need for tonight’s meal, you can freeze the rest and then have the convenience of prepackaged food without the trade off of a healthy meal.

Here is the best reason to make your own Marinara Sauce

It tastes so much better! You can taste each of the real ingredients in this simple Marinara sauce. Bottled sauces are not even a close second. The only way to find out how much better the real thing is, is to make some and taste it for yourself. Why not try?

Are you sold yet?

Homemade Marinara sauce is economical and nutritious. It’s a quick and easy meatless sauce that only takes about a half hour to make. There’s no limit to what you can use it for, and it’s absolutely delicious. So what’s stopping you, give it a try 😊.

Watch how easy Marinara Sauce is to make

Here’s what YOU WILL NEED:

More about the ingredients

The fewer ingredients you are using in a dish, the more important it is that you use quality ingredients. That most definitely applies to this recipe. Each ingredient needs to shine.

Canned tomatoes

Use good quality canned tomatoes. Not all tomatoes are alike. You want the best of the crop for your Marinara sauce. Because we are only cooking this long enough to incorporate and warm the ingredients, the tomatoes are going to taste more like fresh tomatoes than if they had been cooked in a long simmered sauce. That bright fresh taste of tomato is in every delicious mouthful of this sauce. Don’t skimp on the tomatoes, it’s not much more to get the best. Make sure you buy ground, peeled, plum tomatoes, plum tomatoes have more meat and less water than other varieties.

Olive oil

Ricky and I use olive oil in almost all our everyday cooking. We do not buy top shelf, specialty shop olive oil. We buy reasonably priced extra virgin olive oil. The term “extra virgin” means that the the oil came from the first press of the olives, and is more flavorful than the oil from olives pressed more than once. We buy ours from a wholesale club, but if you watch for a sale, you can get a really good price on a good sized bottle at your grocery store too. Buy a decent sized bottle. Buying smaller bottles is so much more expensive per ounce. Olive oil has nutritional value. It is good for you. It lasts a long time in your cabinet, so consider your purchase an investment in better taste and nutritional value. What else counts in our food choices?

Herbs

We list dried herbs for this recipe, but if you have fresh basil and/or oregano at hand, this is a perfect recipe to use them in. If you want to discover the difference, Marinara sauce is an easy way to find out. As for Ricky and I, in the summer when they are in season, we use fresh herbs in this sauce and any other time we use dried.

Dried herbs vs fresh herbs

There is a big difference in fresh herbs vs dried, not only in taste, but in the amount used and how to cook them to retain their fresh flavor. Our post Cooking with Herb gives a lot of information about all that. But to summarize, you need to use 2 to 3 times more if the herbs are fresh. This recipe works great with fresh herbs because it is quick cooking. Any time you are using fresh herbs, be aware that they lose flavor as they cook. Fresh herbs should always be added close to the end of cooking time. In this recipe, you can add fresh herbs with the tomatoes, just as you do dried herbs, because this sauce does not cook for long. Fresh herbs really complement the fresh tomato flavor of this sauce.

Ricky and I each grow herbs during the summer. We have a post about growing herbs if you are interested in trying it yourself, it’s fun. Read more at Back Porch Herb Garden.

You may notice in our pictures that the leaves of our dried herbs are larger than the usual store bought bottled dried herbs. We don’t grind them down as much as those bought in stores. I grow herbs I like to put in my own “Italian” herb mix. My homegrown Italian herb mix is what I use in this sauce. Read more about how I make my herb mix in It’s Drying Time Again.

But if you don’t have a bottle of Italian seasoning there isn’t any need to run out and get a bottle of it. The mix is mostly basil and oregano and that is really all you need. That’s what Ricky uses. This is a good example of why I am usually writing about his recipes. For the most part, they are easier than the concoctions I come up with😉.

And

We suggest you chop the onion and garlic up finely so the flavors and texture can easily blend with the tomatoes. This is a simple sauce with lots of fresh flavor. A fine chop keeps the taste of the onion and garlic subtle.

Let’s get cooking

This is WHAT TO DO:

Use a 10 or 12 inch heavy bottomed skillet.

Covered or uncovered?

It’s your choice. If you want a thick sauce, leave the skillet uncovered while you are simmering. I made this batch thick, as you will see in the next picture. If you want a thinner sauce, just cover the skillet with a lid for some or all of the cooking time.

If you are planning to make a parmesan dish with the sauce, you may want to make it thinner in consistency. It will be easier to spread over the chicken or eggplant, or whatever you are baking. Also, when it is thinner you will use less of the sauce on the unbaked dish and have sauce left to spoon over when it is served.

Done

Serve

I can’t choose which one of the dishes we made with our Marinara sauce that I liked the most!

Eggplant parmesan is one of my favorite Italian dishes, so I could not resist using our batch of Marinara for a quick version of it. I cut slices of eggplant and simply dredged it through flour for a light breading. I then fried it on medium high heat till the breading was golden brown and the eggplant was tender. Then, I spooned lots of sauce on and put a thick chunk of parmesan cheese on top. To melt the cheese I put it under the broiler for about a minute. It was so, so , so good and it only took minutes.

But I am a pasta lover. I am glad I didn’t have to choose which of these dishes I was going to eat. I ate both and loved every bite. Could you choose?