Tomato Sauce

There are sauces you buy at the store, and there are sauces you make at home. Tomato sauce is one sauce that if you buy it at the store, you aren’t actually cooking.

For what you’re doing to be considered cooking, it must pass the Toast Test, which means meeting at least two of the following criteria:

You must combine at least three separate main ingredients, excluding salt and garnishes.
At least one ingredient must be heated to 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
The primary ingredient must significantly change its shape.

Toasting sliced bread is not cooking. Neither is making a sandwich (which is why it is not referred to as “cooking a sandwich.”) But toasting the bread slices with cheese and adding sandwich dressings does qualify as cooking.

Similarly, boiling dry macaroni spaghetti noodles and adding Kroger brand tomato paste is not cooking. The noodles may change their shape, but only in such a way that they can bend. Other macaroni products don’t even do that. You may add parmesan cheese, fresh basil, or capers, but that’s a garnish, not a main ingredient. What makes spaghetti night cooking?

Making your own damn sauce.

Step 1: Picking Tomatoes

Probably the hardest part of making your own sauce is finding good tomatoes. You can go through a lot of tomato brands before you find something that doesn’t have an off-flavor like vinegar from an under-ripe tomato variety or alkali salt from excessive calcium chloride. Organic tomatoes are often worse than store brand despite costing more than double of the cheap ones. You want whole, sweet tomatoes, fresh picked and canned immediately.

Here’s what to look for:

Pear tomatoes, San Marzano if you can get them.
As few ingredients as possible with nothing more than basil added.
The largest cans in the store (100 oz or more)

The best place to find these are in restaurant supply stores. I frequently find the 100 oz cans for under $4. Compare that to a popular brand at the store and you’re getting five times as much on the tomatoes alone.

If you can’t find sweet tomatoes, you may need to add sugar to your sauce to get the flavor right. This is not ideal. You’re better off looking longer. Or if you’re as hardcore as us, you could try growing your own San Marzano tomatoes. This is a lot more work but with the right conditions you can make the best sauce you’ve ever tasted.

Step 2: The Base

Every good recipe starts with the same three ingredients: butter, onion, and garlic. Cut off two tablespoons of butter and melt it in a 5qt pot on medium-high heat. While that’s melting, chop two large white onions and a button of garlic. Add the onions and garlic as you chop them, stirring and sautéing in the butter.

You can make a substitution here: bacon for butter. Start the pan early and fry two slices of thick cut bacon in it on medium heat. Once cooked, remove, chop, and return to the pan. Sauté the onions and garlic in the bacon grease. Note that the quality of the bacon is directly correlated to the overall flavor of the sauce: if you buy economy bacon that uses cheap smoke, your sauce is going to taste like lighter fluid.

Add fresh cracked black pepper, a pinch of salt, and Genovese basil. Stir until the onions are translucent.

Step 3: Boil and Mash

Once your base is done, add the tomatoes. At this point your work can be done, and you can simply wait for the tomatoes to simmer to a boil, mash the whole tomatoes, and serve a chunky, rustic sauce over bowls of boiled pasta. But that gets boring rather quickly.

Step 4: Infinite Permutations

There is no limit to what you can do with a tomato sauce. Tomatoes have a strong flavor that combine well with many other common ingredients, which is why menus at Italian restaurants are an endless list of ways to prepare tomatoes. Here are the most common variations on this theme:

Bacon for butter – I mentioned this in Step 2 but it’s really worth mentioning again. You don’t have to use American bacon either; there are many types of cured pork you can use in much the same way, although you may have to use butter as well to sauté it properly.
Olive oil – A lot of recipes call for sautéing in olive oil. As an experienced home cook: don’t sauté with olive oil. Olive oil has a low smoke point, and the greener it is, the more it smokes. Greener olive oils are getting more popular as an ingredient in the luxury oils market, and I must inform you that these oils are actually for dipping or garnishing, not for sautéing. The best oil for sautéing is butter with avocado oil and coconut oil as alternatives for specific dishes. Don’t waste your expensive oils on sautéing when you can enjoy their full flavor in other ways.
Cheese – Many recipes call for cheese rinds in the sauce. I personally don’t use these very often as they add dairy to the sauce, which makes it less portable to other dishes. However, when done properly, it adds an incredible flavor.
Peppers – One common variation I see is adding chopped Poblano peppers to the base of the sauce. This gives the sauce a sweet, mild flavor that increases complexity. However, again, it reduces the portability of the sauce, as the pepper flavor isn’t compatible with every dish.
Spiciness – Increasing spiciness is most commonly accomplished by adding red pepper flakes to the base, stirring them with the onions to release capsaicin to the onions. The flavor of red pepper flakes can be harsh, and the fresher taste of jalapeno or even habenero can be added in moderation by stewing a single whole pepper in the sauce.
Garlic – adding whole cloves of garlic to stew with the tomatoes is a delicious addition that increases the spiciness and adds bursts of garlic to sauce that you leave chunky.
Texture – The simplest way to smooth a sauce out is to grab an immersion blender and a splatter screen. However, you may want an even smoother sauce. For this you will need a blender, which increases the amount of dishes you use exponentially. The texture is up to you, but for most uses I prefer a chunky sauce. If making pizza, an immersion blender should pulse the sauce enough to use as a pizza base.
Time – The most important variable is time. The longer you boil the sauce, the more the flavors combine. I go as far as to roast my sauce in the oven overnight, adding water as necessary. This can cause the sauce to crust over, but this crust adds a more rustic texture to the sauce when blended in.

Vancouver, WA

360-207-9459

Hours

Tomato Sauce