If you are looking for a quick tomato sauce that tastes awesome, this is the sauce for you. Perfect on pasta and it only takes 20 minutes!
Fast Sauce For Fast Dinners
With the holidays upon us, many of us are looking for quickie dinners when we don’t have time to prepare something more traditional.
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If you want a hurry-up supper, which lots of times involves pasta, then this sauce will come to the rescue.
Make A Big Batch
You might want to think about making a double batch of this sauce since it’s so versatile.
Not only is it great for a quick spaghetti dinner, it’s also wonderful on many other things! This is my go-to sauce for my stuffed shells and it’s even delicious on pork chops, meat loaf and chicken.
If you make it with petit diced tomatoes, it can even stand in for salsa! It freezes well too, so what’s not to love?
Add-Ins Work
Making this chunky tomato sauce as-is is good in itself and the big plus is that it’s not only vegetarian, but vegan too!
But this sauce also lends itself to add-ins.
Add browned ground beef and it’s a quickie bolognese sauce. Ground turkey and chicken can be substituted for that, Using lean turkey and chicken also makes the sauce low fat and healthy too I imagine.
I used the last of my fresh basil and oregano and I encourage you to use fresh herbs in this because I think that’s one thing that’s responsible for the awesome flavor, but the dried varieties from the supermarket spice shelf will work just as well.
The Recipe
- 1 (28 oz) can diced or petit diced tomatoes (don't drain)
- 1 (6 oz) can tomato paste
- ¼ cup chopped onion
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbs olive oil (extra-virgin preferred)
- 6-8 large fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped or chiffonade (thin shredded) -OR- 2 tsp dried
- 1 tbs fresh oregano leaves -OR- 1 tsp dried
- 2 tbs brown sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- ¼ tsp pepper
- Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add oil.
- Cook the onion and garlic until fragrant; about 3 minutes
- Add the tomato paste and cook, stirring frequently, until the tomato paste changes color from bright red to a brick red color (this is the secret to getting great flavor).
- Stir in the can of undrained tomatoes, the brown sugar, the herbs and the salt & pepper.
- Bring all this to a boil, then cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10-15 minutes.
- Freezes well, so double and triple batches can be made.
Yum
