Author: Maria Alfano
Ever wonder how to make Italian pasta sauce? Well, you’re in luck. I learned the secret from my mother and now I want to pass it on to all of you. The best part of all this is you don’t need hours or days to make the most delicious spaghetti sauce. Follow this simple recipe and any pasta dish you make will taste as if it was made by a sweet Italian Nonna (granny).
Long gone are the days of cooking pasta sauce for hours at a time to get the consistency and flavors just right. People lead busy lives. There just isn’t time anymore to wait hours for dinner to be ready. In the age of modern conveniences, it would so easy to just grab a jar of ready-made sauce (yuk) full of sugar, preservatives, and chemicals. No need for that! In the time it takes you to prepare dinner, the pasta sauce will be ready to serve.
Sunday mornings in our house when I was growing up brought the aroma of old-fashioned Italian spaghetti sauce. Nothing woke us up faster than knowing what was waiting for us. And, there was nothing like dipping warm, crusty Italian bread into the sauce!
There are so many recipes out there for different sauces. You will find alfredo sauces, carbonara sauces, and even recipes disguised as sauces. Finding one that is easy to make can be tricky. The goal is to make your life easy with these super simple tips and tricks to a delicious Italian pasta sauce.
Super Simple Italian Pasta Sauce Anyone Can Make
This spaghetti sauce is so versatile you can use it on any kind of pasta from lasagna to baked pasta, to capellini. And, you can make it your own by adding extra ingredients like chili peppers, veggies, and beef ends.
This post will give you the definitions of different types of Italian pasta sauce and an easy recipe. Ready! Set! Cook!
Types of Pasta Sauce
The most popular Italian pasta sauces are noted below. They are all delicious in their own rights and all have one thing in common. Yup, you guessed it. The base sauce for all these is this simple recipe found at the bottom of the page.
Marinara – is a simple tomato sauce (our recipe below). It is quick and easy to make, tastes delicious, and is not as thick as some other sauces.
Bolognese – is a thick rich sauce made with a marinara base and lots of ground browned beef cooked right into the sauce. Some recipes call for milk or cream but I prefer not to add any.
Arrabbiata – is a marinara sauce on fire. The word “arrabbiata” in Italian means to be angry. The way to make a marinara sauce angry is to add plenty of spicy chili pepper flakes. If you have fresh chilis you can cook them right into the sauce and remove it before serving.
Vodka – like its name suggests, the sauce needs a couple of ounces of vodka added to the end of the cooking process to finish the sauce. The marinara base has cream added to the middle of the cooking cycle. All these fine ingredients give the sauce a silky smooth texture and flavor. If serving to children, cook a little longer to evaporate the alcohol in the vodka.
Italian Pasta Sauce Recipe
Let’s get cooking. I know time is a commodity these days between work, the family, date night, and other activities, there are limited hours left in the day or week to prepare a terrific pasta dish. It would be so much easier to make something out of a box or order Uber eats. This recipe will change your mind. In the time it takes you to prepare the rest of the meal, set the table, and gather everyone together, this sauce will be ready to go. Just remember to start with making the sauce first!
Passata From Scratch
If you’re adventurous and have a few hours to spare you can make the sauce completely from scratch. This will take a few hours from start to finish but you will end up with a batch of raw sauce that you can use for several weeks. Make it once and use it anytime in the future. This step is purely optional.
Ingredients:
6 lbs. of Roma tomatoes for every 16 oz jar of finished sauce
Fresh basil – one sprig per jar
Recipe:
Blanche the tomatoes
Peel the skin off, cut in half, and seed them
Put them in your food processor and pulse until desired smoothness
Add a few basil leaves to each jar
Seal tightly
Preserve:
To keep this sauce for weeks in the sealed jars you will need to do a bain-marie. Fill a large pot with water. Turn the jars upside down and place them into the water. Ensure the jars are covered by the water. Slowly bring the water to a soft rolling boil and boil for a minimum of 2 hours. This will vacuum seal the jars so now air or moisture gets and will keep the sauce fresh for weeks. When cooled store it in your pantry and pull it out when you are ready to use it.
Marinara Sauce
Don’t want the hassle of making the sauce from scratch? No problem. Your local grocery store should sell “passata” which is exactly the recipe above. Make sure that what you purchase has only tomatoes listed in the ingredients and nothing else. Some recipes will ask you to put tomato paste into your sauce. Trust me, you don’t need it but feel free to add some if you prefer.
This recipe will serve 4-6 people depending on how thick you want the sauce and how much sauce you like on your pasta. The joke in our house is that I eat pasta with my sauce instead of the other way around.
Ingredients:
Passata – 1 jar
Oregano – 2 tsp
Garlic – 2 cloves crushed
Onion – 1/2 a small onion finely chopped
Salt and pepper to taste – start with small quantities and add as needed to avoid making the sauce overly salty.
Recipe:
Add all the ingredients to a medium-sized saucepan. Cook covered over medium-high heat for at least 30 minutes. Stir occasionally to avoid sticking to the bottom of the pot. Taste and adjust for flavor.
If you like your sauce a little thicker, remove the lid for the last 5-6 minutes of cooking so the water evaporates. You will need to stir more frequently when the lid is off.
Marinara Versions
Make the marinara your own by adding browned ground beef to the pot before adding the passata. Or, if you’re a rib lover like me, nothing tastes better than spare ribs cooked in Italian pasta sauce – mind you, this will require the sauce to cook for 40-60 minutes. Add your chili flakes, meatballs, cauliflower, or anything else you might enjoy into the sauce. Just remember it will need to cook a little longer when you add other ingredients.
Serve your marinara sauce over your favorite pasta (mine happens to be rigatoni) and top it with some freshly chopped basil and some grated parmesan cheese. Put any leftover sauce into a freezer-safe container until you want more pasta. It will stay well in your freezer for up to 2 weeks. Enjoy!
In Summary
This post was all about a quick and easy Italian pasta sauce that will have your family begging for more. Whether you have only a few minutes or a few hours, this recipe will have you cooking just a southern Italian Nonna in no time. This sauce is not just for pasta. Use it on pizza, chicken cacciatore, eggplant parmesan, and so much more.
We would love to hear from you. Let us know how you and your family liked the recipe.