There are a few little things that really make a huge quality difference in our dinnertime meals. One of them is homemade spaghetti sauce. It doesn’t save us much (if anything) to make it ourselves, but it requires so little effort for such a huge flavor difference that it’s hard to pass up doing. On average, I pay around $1.25 per jar to make it myself, but that can go up or down quite a bit depending on seasonal prices.
You can of course, start your own garden in the coming weeks and use this recipe for your tomatoes and onions. That’ll be big savings. But using fresh tomatoes (as opposed to canned) requires that you do a little extra work to get the skins off. Once that’s done, there will be a cup-for-cup equivalent for fresh or canned tomatoes and you can just follow this recipe.
A few important notes:
- If you’re using fresh, ripe tomatoes taste better in sauce. The riper, the better.
- The best fresh tomatoes (for my money) are Roma. They have a thicker, meatier wall and less water and make for a tastier sauce.
- Get the best results by using the best canned tomatoes for this job. Trust me. Look for plum tomatoes from San Marzano. HERE‘s everything you could even hope to know about the canned tomatoes.
- 2 28 oz. cans whole tomatoes
- 1 6 oz. can tomato paste
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tsp. kosher salt
- ½ c. chicken broth
- 1 Tbs olive oil
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- 2 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp dried parsley flakes
- 1 tsp dried basil
- Heat olive oil in a large saucepan. Add onions and cook until translucent.
- On a cutting board, make a paste out of minced garlic and kosher salt. Add it to the pan and cook for 1-2 minutes.
- Add chicken broth and stir.
- Crush whole tomatoes with your hands or a handheld mixer to your desired consistency and add to pan.
- Add tomato paste, pepper, red pepper flakes and sugar. Simmer for 1-2 hours.
- Add parsley and basil and continue cooking for 10 minutes.
I always make a huge pot of this and freeze it in meal size portions. I don’t think any of the fresh flavor is lost in the freezing. Stays for up to 6 months.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Just a little tip about using your own garden tomatoes, as we do: Cut out the stems, and them put them straight into the freezer. When you have enough in the freezer to make sauce with (even if it takes a few weeks or months), put the bags of frozen tomatoes into the bathtub with a little water in it to help thaw them out. When they are all defrosted, the skins slip right off! Sometimes we do the same thing when we find romas at a very good price. I’ll buy 40 lbs. and put them in the freezer, then defrost, and skins slip right off!
You might want to use vegetable broth rather than chicken. I’m a vegetarian and it Kills me when people put meat in things that should be vegetarian friendly. Other than that, looks good.
Thank you!! I just found canned tomatoes on sale and was going to make a big batch of spaghetti sauce to freeze. This saves me having to look up a recipe!