Best Marinara Sauce Recipe

Many people like to buy marinara sauce due to its convenience and ready-to-use packaging. However, it has preservatives included that keep the sauce lasting for months.

There's nothing wrong it this, but if you're someone who prefers to have freshly made sauce with no preservatives, then you can prepare them at home. 

First, let's get to know why to make marinara sauce at home: 

• Customized flavors: Preparing marinara sauce at home allows you to customize the taste by adding more or less ingredients like salt, herbs, garlic, etc. 
• Adjust ingredients: You will be free to include the ingredients of your choice. it will give you the option to avoid preservatives or artificial flavors. 
• Healthy: Unlike packaged sauce, you can reduce the quantity of oil, salt, and chilies to make the sauce more healthy. 
• Low Cost: Since a majority of ingredients are available in your kitchen so preparing it at home costs you less than buying from the stores. 
• Fresh: When you make the sauce at home, you don't use preservatives and prepare it in limited quantities avoiding the need to store it for a longer time, this will allow you to enjoy the freshness of the sauce.
• Own Touch: When you prepare the sauce by yourself in a good mood, then people who eat the sauce also feel the good vibes in it. 

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are the main ingredients in making marinara sauce. Their tangy, and juicy flavor goes well with other ingredients, enhancing the taste. Here, get some fresh tomatoes from your kitchen and blend them into a thick paste. If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can use the tomato paste available at home. 

Garlic

You can't miss this ingredient at any cost. Though, it is smaller in size but can add a pleasantly robust taste to the sauce. The garlic can be used either minced or finely chopped. 

Onion

Onion is sliced finely so that it enhances the deep sweet flavor of the sauce. Also, it blends well in the sauce and you won't even see a single trace of onions when the sauce is fully prepared. 

Olive oil

Olive oil is initially used in the sauce to add richness. Besides this, it has monounsaturated fatty acids that balance the cholesterol level, making the sauce more healthy. 

Black pepper

Black pepper adds a subtle spicy taste to the sauce, making it a bit hot. It's good to slightly increase its amount if you like the sauce hot. 

Dried herbs

Dried herbs add aromatic and fresh flavor to the sauce. For that, you can include herbs such as basil, oregano, or parsley. 

Optional ingredients

To further alleviate the flavors, you can add sugar, red pepper flakes, bay leaf, and any ingredients of your choice. You can adjust the quantity according to your taste.

• A gas stove: A properly functioning gas stove is very essential as it plays a major role in cooking the sauce properly. Along with this, the stove should have options to adjust the flames. 
• A pan: Having a frying pan helps to cook all ingredients properly. It's best if the pan is non-sticky as it will not let the sauce get stuck on the pan. Make sure to have a large or wide pan so that the sauce won't spill while stirring. 
• A lid: A perfectly fit lid is important to stop the airflow during the cooking process. It will facilitate the cooking of ingredients faster
• Cutting board and Knife: These are needed to finely cut ingredients such as garlic, onion, herb leaves, etc. 
• Measuring spoon: It allows you to determine the right amount of ingredients, which will eliminate the need to test again to further add them. 
• Wooden spoon or spatula: Its role is to help you stir the sauce properly. So, get one ready.
• A blender: In case you don't have tomato paste, you can use the blender to grind raw tomatoes to turn them into a thick paste. 
• Serving bowl: When your sauce is fully ready, you will need a bowl to serve it. 
• Storage container: It will be needed to store the excess sauce in the fridge. Since you don't want your sauce to get spoilt. 
• Timer: Setting a timer will allow you to decide the right time when the sauce is all cooked. So, you can turn off the stove and let the sauce cool down. 

Ingredient Measurements

• 1-2 whole tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 1 medium-sized onion
• 1/2-1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried herbs
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
• Few bay leaves (optional)

It's important to note that this proportion varies depending on the quantity of sauce you want to prepare. You can adjust the amount of ingredients based on your taste. Besides that, if you feel like adding other types of ingredients, you can do that. 

Instructions

1. Heat the oil

The first step is to place a medium-sized pan on the stove and adjust the gas flames to medium. Then, pour 2 tablespoons of olive oil into the pan to heat. Heating oil is important to cook garlic and onions properly. This allows the oil to infuse into the ingredients, enhancing the flavor.

2. Add the onion

Once the oil gets heated and you see some smoke coming out of it, then add finely chopped onion pieces to the pan. Stir the added onion with a spatula or wooden spoon to cook properly. After a few minutes of stirring, the onion starts to turn golden or brown. This indicates that the onion has released its sweetness and flavor base for the sauce. 

3. Add the garlic

The third step is to add nicely minced or chopped garlic. Follow the same process as you did with onions. Stirring is essential to cook garlic properly. Unlike onion, garlic cooks quickly and this is why garlic is added after onion. 

When garlic is ready it leaves the aromatic garlicky smell and also turns golden or brown. Don't let garlic burn as it will spoil the sauce by spoiling the taste to bitter. 

4. Add the tomatoes

In this step, you need to add tomatoes the main part of the whole process. Pour the crushed tomatoes or tomato paste into the pan. Then start stirring until tomatoes blend well with other ingredients.

Make sure to maintain the gas flames in medium heat throughout the whole process because increasing the flames will only burn the whole paste. Also, keep stirring the mixture more frequently to alleviate the flavor evenly. 

5. Season the sauce

Here we come close to almost the final step. This step requires you to add all the seasonings such as salt, black pepper, and dried herbs all together. To mix these seasonings, stir them well with a spatula slowly. Besides that, you can add sugar, red chilli flakes, and bay leaf but these are optional so feel free to skip them. 

6. Simmer

All the required ingredients are mixed into the pan now. Once the seasoning process is done, Let the mixture simmer for 18-23 minutes and leave the pan open without covering it with a lid. In this step, slightly increase the heat flame. This will make the sauce thick thereby reducing the excess liquids from the mixture.

To make the flavor more intense, you can simmer the sauce for a longer time than required. During this time, you have to pay attention to stirring the sauce frequently to prevent the burn. 

7. Adjust the seasonings

Once the sauce reaches the boiling point, take out some sauce with the help of a spoon and taste it. If the sauce tastes good with the richness and flavors of all seasoning, then you can proceed to the serving process. Whereas, if you feel some of the seasonings need to be added, then you can go with that. 

8. Serve and enjoy

The final step is to serve the sauce in a bow or a platter. before serving it, turn off the gas and let it cool down for 15-20 minutes. Use a wooden spoon and pour all the mixture into a bowl slowly. You can enjoy this flavorful sauce with your favorite pasta or any dish you like. 

You can keep the leftover sauce in a tightly sealed container and store it in the fridge or freezer. If you plan to store this for months then keep the container in the freezer. In case of short-term storing, you can simply place the container in the fridge.

Here are some helpful tips to make restaurant-like marinara sauce at home:

• Use of wine or balsamic vinegar: To increase the richness of flavors, you can add a splash of red wine or a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar during the simmering process.
• Use of fresh ingredients: For better quality of the sauce, always choose fresh ingredients from tomatoes, to garlic, onions, and bay leaves. 
• Crush tomatoes: In case, you don't have a blender to blend the tomatoes into a paste, crush the tomatoes using your hand or any tool. This will save you time for cooking chopped tomatoes and make the sauce process faster. 
• Use of basil leaves: Before you turn off the gas stove, add a few basil fresh leaves during the simmering process. It will add and enhance flavors. 
• Simmer slowly: No matter how late you are for other things, don't rush to simmer the sauce by increasing the flame. Simmering slowly concentrates all the flavors and increases the quality and of thickness the sauce. 

With pasta

We have been eating pasta for ages and those who have tried marinara pasta can only know how delicious it tastes. The sweet, hot, and tangy flavor of marinara sauce blends well with softly boiled pasta. You experience the richness of flavors when have a first bite of it. 

To prepare this flavorful dish, you can heat the oil in a pan, add some chopped onions, and then garlic cloves. Cook these ingredients well until they turn brown. Pour the boiled pasta into the mixture and stir them well.

The stirring process will help to blend all ingredients evenly. After that, add the marinara sauce to the pan and cook for 4-5 minutes. Lastly, garnish with some green basil leaves. The most awaited mouthwatering marinara pasta is ready to be served. 

With chicken

Instead of using tomato ketchup with chicken, Serve the grilled, roasted, or fired chicken with the marinara sauce to enjoy the depth of intense flavors. The crunchiness of the chicken perfectly complements the soft and thick texture of the sauce. 

To enjoy this dish, all you need to do is get or prepare some grilled or any kind of chicken you prefer. Then serve the chicken on a platter and put some marinara sauce on one side of the platter. Now, you can enjoy by dipping the chicken in the sauce.

Besides this, you can add marinara sauce while cooking the chicken and transform the appearance and taste from boring to exciting. 

With pizza

To make a delightful pizza, lots of layerings and toppings need to be added. One of the first layers is made by adding marinara or tomato sauce sauce to its foundation. Here the marinara sauce perfectly blends well with various toppings like cheese, crispy veggies, or chicken pieces.

The richness in taste just gets better and better by the time you finish the pizza. 

With roasted vegetables

The marinara sauce also pairs well with a range of roasted vegetables like potatoes, carrots, eggplant, and broccoli. You can dip these vegetables into the sauce and enjoy its rich flavor. Besides, this you can also 1-2 tablespoons of marinara sauce into the vegetables while roasting them. This will alleviate the flavor as the heat infuses the sauce into the veggies during the roasting process. 

If you have marinara sauce stored in the freezer, you can invite your friends to have a taste of this flavorful snack. 

With seafood

There's no way we would forget to mention the seafood when it comes to marinara sauce. We have been seeing people trying seafood with red sauce. The sauce you've seen might be not exactly marinara sauce, but trust me seafood goes well with the savory and thick texture of the marinara sauce. 

You can eat seafood such as crabs, and lobsters by dipping them into the sauce. You can add extra spices to the sauce to make it hot and enjoy with soft, a bit sweet, and fatty crabs or lobsters. Along with this, you can also use this sauce while frying some other Korean dishes such as tofu, kimchi fried rice, tacos, meatballs, etc. 

Besides these foods, marinara sauce pairs well with other dishes including scrambled eggs, lasagna, fish, or any kind of meat, crackers, sandwiches, burgers, etc.

To store the marinara sauce follow the given guidelines:

1. Use an airtight container

Pour the remaining marinara sauce into an airtight container. This prevents airflow into the container, making the sauce fresh. Make sure to keep the lid tight when not in use. 

2. Refrigerate

Keep the container in the fridge at 40°F (4°C) or lower immediately after you are done preparing the sauce. The stored sauce can be eaten for 3-6 days. Whereas, the sauce can be stored for up to 6 months by placing it in the freezer at 0°F (-18°C) or lower.

3. Lable the date

Writting the date you prepared the sauce on the container helps you to track the time to decide its freshness. This way you'd know when you can continue to use the sauce. 

4. Use a clean spoon

To avoid cross-contamination, always use a clean spoon to take out the sauce you need. Also, avoid dipping food into the container, this causes the bacteria to enter into the sauce and get contaminated. 

5. Check the freshness

Whenever you take out the sauce to use, always check the freshness of the sauce. If it gives an unpleasant smell, don't use it.