Culinary K's Quick Batch Spaghetti (Marinara) Sauce

The Culinary K series strives to bring you realistic recipes you can easily incorporate into your life.

Making marinara sauce probably conjures all sorts of long Sunday memories. It was either around your nonna’s table or your mom’s. In my house, mom was the great cook. She says she started because of a high school home economics class. She wasn’t raised with much, and cooking wasn’t her mother’s strong suit. Gramma did her best. Despite everything, she raised one hell of a daughter. I was the beneficiary of that, I and my brother.

I started to cook at a young age with my mom. I would help in the kitchen where I could, of course, when the whim took me. I have always loved food, so it took me more often than not. Today, many of the recipes that I share on the blog are family recipes that I have learned. Some recipes are things I have developed on my own with ingenuity and know how.

I believe that anyone can cook. It is a learned skill.

The things that help to inform a good cook is a good background in some science, so you understand the chemistry behind cooking: what heat will do to certain substances, what one substance does to another, and so on. Art is another background, as well as history and literature. The mixture of these topics inform the cook in ways that you will not always realize.

But, you are here to catch a quick recipe for making spaghetti sauce. Let’s get started…

What you will need:

1 medium sauce pan, wooden spoon, measuring spoons, garlic (fresh), onion (fresh), olive oil, pack of crushed or chopped tomatoes (Pomì brand is best and it comes in a foil pack box, sold right by the cans), basil, parsley, sugar, salt, pepper, bay leaves, oregano, parm (Parmigiano-Reggiano) and Romano cheese mix (fresh grated).

1 Pomì pack (26.46 oz) of chopped tomatoes
1/2 small onion sliced or chopped
3 medium cloves of fresh garlic chopped
2 TBSP Olive Oil
2 TBSP Parsley
2 TBSP Parm/Romano cheese fresh grated
2 TSP Basil
1 TSP Sugar
1 Large Bay leaf (dried, some are small so use 2 if this is the case)

Directions:

Chop your onions and garlic. Grate your cheese if not already done.
Add olive oil to a medium saucepan and heat on medium.
Add chopped onion and sauté until translucent. Add chopped garlic half way through the process (about 2 or 3 minutes in). Salt and pepper to taste. (If you’re using mills, a couple turns usually is enough.)
Reduce heat. Cut open the Pomì tomatoes and poor over the onions and garlic.
Add parsley, parm/Romano, basil, sugar and bay leaf. Stir together well.
Simmer for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

You may need to add water, as the sauce can thicken up considerably in the cooking process. If that is the case, use a small glass to add a little bit at a time until you get the desired consistency, but only if you are going to use the sauce right away. If you are storing the sauce to use later in the week, or freeze, do not add the water until you reheat.

This sauce freezes great to make ahead and use later. It will make about 4 meals for the average person (1/2 cup to 2/3 cup per serving).

Tip: remove the bay leaf at the end of the cooking. Many bay leaves will make you sauce bitter if left in the sauce during storage.

This sauce is great for spaghetti, eggplant or chicken Parmesan, meatball sandwiches, etc.

Note: this is not how I make my large batch sauce, but you can multiply this recipe to make a bigger batch that will work just as well as Grandma’s Sunday sauce.

Enjoy!