Basic Pasta Sauce Recipe

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4 from 2 votes

Easy Tomato Sauce Recipe

A great tomato sauce from scratch, made from 6 ingredients in less than 30 minutes. A fantastic time-saver and a versatile recipe that never fails.

If you are using whole plum tomatoes it’s better to chop them before adding them to the pan. I like to safe the mess and crush tinned tomatoes with a potato musher once they are cooking.

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time20 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Italian

Keyword: marinara, sugo, tomato sauce

Servings: 4

Calories: 53kcal

Author: Lea

Ingredients

• 1 onion
• 1 tin peeled plum tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 3 tablespoons olive oil for frying

Equipment

• pan

Instructions 

• Finely chop the onion.
• Heat the oil in the pan and fry the onion until light golden.
• Add tomatoes and all additional ingredients including crushed or thinly sliced garlic, sugar and salt.
• Let the sauce reduce on medium heat for 15 – 20 minutes.

Nutrition

Calories: 53kcal | Carbohydrates: 11g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 1g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 242mg | Potassium: 245mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 7g | Vitamin A: 144IU | Vitamin C: 13mg | Calcium: 47mg | Iron: 1mg

ABOUT THE RECIPE

Since the day I’ve tried this brilliant homemade sauce I fell in love with it and I’ve never gone back to having spaghetti with ketchup or one of those commercial sauces (oh yeah I still remember those dinners well).

Making this amazing tomato pasta sauce takes around 30 minutes of your time, that’s how simple it is. It’s a perfect solution when you need to make a quick dinner from scratch and you don’t want to compromise on taste. It’s handy to prepare the sauce in advance and store it in the fridge for up to 4 days or freeze it to make sure it lasts longer.

Preparing two meals from this recipe is easy. Just double the ingredients and cook a bigger batch.  We often have ½ of the sauce with spaghetti and parmesan and we keep the rest of the sauce in the fridge for another quick meal 2 – 3 days later.  

It’s super simple to alter the recipe and make it taste different by adding 2 big tablespoons of cream cheese and blending it. I usually use Philadelphia because it’s always in our fridge but if you want to make it more indulgent, you can add mascarpone instead. This little step adds a smooth, creamy taste to the sauce. You can serve it with olives or fresh basil for change.

In my experience, making the sauce smooth helps with fussy children alias my younger boy. He barely eats any vegetables, so he doesn’t like the sauce when it’s left with pieces of tomatoes but he loves it with his pasta when I blend it.