MARINARA SAUCE

A simple classic tomato sauce

Marinara sauce 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 just 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.

Warm a store bought loaf of Italian or French bread in the oven and you have a feast. Even better, 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 not only enhance flavor they have their own share of vitamins and minerals too.

Why make your own Marinara?

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

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. It’s the major ingredient and represents the bulk of the cost in making your own marinara sauce. A large can of tomatoes isn’t cheap, but compare the 28 ounces you get in the can 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. Look on the label of the premade sauce. It’s likely water is one of the first ingredients listed, which means a lot of water has been added.

Here’s something pretty interesting to notice also. The brand names that you may associate with higher quality, will often 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 may not 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 in many cases. They can 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.

While you are checking out the label keep in mind that the same marketing research used to lead us to believe there is more sauce in the bottle, also has found that words have selling power also. If the name on the bottle includes the word Italian, or has “someone’s grandmother’s” picture on it they have found you might believe it is better tasting than others. If the label has a more sophisticated look a consumer is often willing to pay more. None of these tricks of the trade mean the sauce inside 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 quality of food 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 only minutes to make

It only takes 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 your homemade marinara is than a jarred sauce, 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 and most of that time is simmering the sauce on the stove.

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 and seeds than other varieties.

Olive oil

I use olive oil in almost all of my everyday cooking. I don’t buy top shelf specialty shop olive oil. I 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. I buy mine 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. In the summer when they are in season I use fresh herbs in this sauce and when they are out of season I use dried.

Dried herbs vs fresh herbs

There is a big difference between using fresh herbs vs dried. Not only is there a difference in taste but in the amount you use and how to cook them to get their optimal 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 some flavor as they cook. As a general rule, fresh herbs are best added close to the end of cooking time. In this recipe, you can add fresh herbs with the tomatoes as you do if using dried herbs because this sauce doesn’t cook for long.

Fresh herbs really complement the fresh tomato flavor of this sauce.

Growing your own herbs can be fun

If you want to read more about growing herbs yourself go to Back Porch Herb Garden.

You may notice in our pictures that the leaves of dried herbs are often larger than the usual store bought bottled dried herbs. Mine are not ground up as much as those bought in stores.

I grow certain herbs to make my own “Italian” seasoning mix. My homegrown dried Italian herb mix is what I use in this sauce when fresh herbs are out of season.

You can read more about how I make my herb seasoning mix in It’s Drying Time Again.

If you don’t have a bottle of mixed Italian herb 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. 😉 Having dried basil and dried oregano on hand gives you much of what you need to make countless Mediterranean meals.

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. A heavy bottomed skillet helps to prevent scorching and burning. It also provides an even heat.

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. The cover prevents the evaporated steam from escaping the skillet. That’s why using the cover will regulate how thick or thin you want your marinara sauce.

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

Done

It’s ready to serve over pasta or use for another dish

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.

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