I’ll leave no stone unturned, no question unanswered. Nothing will be “too obvious to answer”—a mistake that experienced chefs on the internet sometimes make. Let’s start with what is certainly the most obvious element of a tomato sauce: the tomatoes. I always use some subset of these 4 tomato products in my tomato sauces, prepared in the Italian tradition: Roma tomatoes, on-the-vine tomatoes, cherry or grape tomatoes, and San Marzano tomatoes. Roma and vine tomatoes are best in the summer. Cherry or grape tomatoes, which are much smaller, stay good longer. San Marzano tomatoes, grown in peak season then preserved and packed, are also always an excellent option, though, since they must be grown in a protected area of Italy (in the same way the French are particular about what you can call “real champagne”), they are certainly the most expensive option.
I remember that when we stayed at his place in the summer (winter, technically, in the southern hemisphere) in 2007, one of my granduncles, the most recent link our family has to Italy, spent hours marking a little x at each tomato’s top and bottom poles, dropping the tomato in boiling water, letting the skin loosen, pulling it off, and then shocking it in ice water—before cooking it in the sauce in earnest for several hours. If you want to be as thorough as he was when he made that sauce, you absolutely can follow his lead. But if you don’t have the time or energy to undergo such a labor-intensive process, you can absolutely produce a stunning sauce omitting this step.
How many tomatoes you use depends on a variety of factors largely reducible to only one: personal taste. In general, I like 5 tomatoes per pound of pasta. This can vary depending on whether I have more fleshy vegetables (bell peppers), the juiciness of the tomatoes, or precisely what sauce I’m making. I very rarely deliberately use only tomatoes in my sauces; even by adding bell peppers (usually 5:2 or 6:2, tomatoes: bell peppers), the sauce remains very tomato-forward.
Among Italians, the texture of a proper tomato-based sauce is always one of the hottest culinary debates. If I’m making a sauce destined to be served with pasta, then I keep it fairly chunky, using a food processor. But if I’m making a tomato sauce that will be combined with cream (as in the recipe I posted for Stroganoff), then I make the sauce as creamy as possible by using a blender instead.
We rarely have carrots or celery at home, so I can rarely ever make a complete “sofrito,” but I would strongly recommend very finely mincing—almost to a paste—carrots, onions, celery (the classic French mirepoix) and garlic. I normally only have regular access to onions and garlic, but whatever you have, dice it, and sweat it out (cook off the internal moisture without much color) before adding tomatoes and peppers that have been blended to your desired consistency. When the blended tomatoes hit the pan, season everything with dried oregano, dried basil, and freshly ground black pepper, but wait until the sauce has reached its final volume before seasoning it with salt.
Keep an eye on your tomato sauce to prevent it from burning and add water as necessary. Cook, uncovered at a low simmer for at least 45 minutes and up to 3 hours.
If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!
I remember that when we stayed at his place in the summer (winter, technically, in the southern hemisphere) in 2007, one of my granduncles, the most recent link our family has to Italy, spent hours marking a little x at each tomato’s top and bottom poles, dropping the tomato in boiling water, letting the skin loosen, pulling it off, and then shocking it in ice water—before cooking it in the sauce in earnest for several hours. If you want to be as thorough as he was when he made that sauce, you absolutely can follow his lead. But if you don’t have the time or energy to undergo such a labor-intensive process, you can absolutely produce a stunning sauce omitting this step.
How many tomatoes you use depends on a variety of factors largely reducible to only one: personal taste. In general, I like 5 tomatoes per pound of pasta. This can vary depending on whether I have more fleshy vegetables (bell peppers), the juiciness of the tomatoes, or precisely what sauce I’m making. I very rarely deliberately use only tomatoes in my sauces; even by adding bell peppers (usually 5:2 or 6:2, tomatoes: bell peppers), the sauce remains very tomato-forward.
Among Italians, the texture of a proper tomato-based sauce is always one of the hottest culinary debates. If I’m making a sauce destined to be served with pasta, then I keep it fairly chunky, using a food processor. But if I’m making a tomato sauce that will be combined with cream (as in the recipe I posted for Stroganoff), then I make the sauce as creamy as possible by using a blender instead.
We rarely have carrots or celery at home, so I can rarely ever make a complete “sofrito,” but I would strongly recommend very finely mincing—almost to a paste—carrots, onions, celery (the classic French mirepoix) and garlic. I normally only have regular access to onions and garlic, but whatever you have, dice it, and sweat it out (cook off the internal moisture without much color) before adding tomatoes and peppers that have been blended to your desired consistency. When the blended tomatoes hit the pan, season everything with dried oregano, dried basil, and freshly ground black pepper, but wait until the sauce has reached its final volume before seasoning it with salt.
Keep an eye on your tomato sauce to prevent it from burning and add water as necessary. Cook, uncovered at a low simmer for at least 45 minutes and up to 3 hours.
If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!
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