Making pasta sauce from scratch is fine and dandy, but it is time consuming. It can take all day - literally - to get the down-home, straight-outta-Italy flavor you want. But buying a jar of marinara or pasta sauce at the grocery store just seems so... so... non-Foodie. A lot of us just can't bring ourselves to do it. That is, unless, we buy the pricey stuff, but then we always think to ourselves, "Man, ten bucks for pasta sauce? I could have made it myself for way less." But then we're taken back full-circle to the beginning of our dilemma of not having the time to do it the way we want..
Here's a way to compromise in every direction. We're talking low cost, high flavor, no extra time, and probably even better tasting than some of the run-of-the-mill Italian restaurants in your area:
Here's a way to compromise in every direction. We're talking low cost, high flavor, no extra time, and probably even better tasting than some of the run-of-the-mill Italian restaurants in your area:
Just buy the cheapo store pasta sauce and add a cup of red wine to it.
Just dump the cheapo jar of pasta sauce or marinara into a sauce pan and stir a cup of red wine into it. Bring it to a boil then let it simmer out all of the alcohol and reduce to the desired thickness. Give it a taste and add salt, garlic, oregano, basil or whatever you think is missing from it, and send it to the top of your pile of pasta and dig in.
Will it be as good as the all-day method of making the perfect sauce? No (unless you're prone to screwing that up). Will it taste as good as the $10 bottle of expensive, high-end pasta sauce? Yes. We think so. We haven't missed yet. In fact, most of the time, we're more impressed with the doctored-up cheap stuff than we are with the priced-for-pretentiousness pasta sauces that are all too common in the grocery stores.
Of course, we recommend reading the ingredients on the jar you buy to see if there are any really unhealthy ingredients in there (i.e.: high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, etc.) and avoiding the really, really bad stuff like the plague to Foodies that it is, but don't be ashamed to get the cheapest, decently-made pasta sauce you can find at the market and doctor it up with some drinkable red wine.
NOTE: if you're making a meat sauce, cook the meat first and use the same pan for the sauce. That'll add in a lot of extra flavor, too.
Just dump the cheapo jar of pasta sauce or marinara into a sauce pan and stir a cup of red wine into it. Bring it to a boil then let it simmer out all of the alcohol and reduce to the desired thickness. Give it a taste and add salt, garlic, oregano, basil or whatever you think is missing from it, and send it to the top of your pile of pasta and dig in.
Will it be as good as the all-day method of making the perfect sauce? No (unless you're prone to screwing that up). Will it taste as good as the $10 bottle of expensive, high-end pasta sauce? Yes. We think so. We haven't missed yet. In fact, most of the time, we're more impressed with the doctored-up cheap stuff than we are with the priced-for-pretentiousness pasta sauces that are all too common in the grocery stores.
Of course, we recommend reading the ingredients on the jar you buy to see if there are any really unhealthy ingredients in there (i.e.: high fructose corn syrup, monosodium glutamate, etc.) and avoiding the really, really bad stuff like the plague to Foodies that it is, but don't be ashamed to get the cheapest, decently-made pasta sauce you can find at the market and doctor it up with some drinkable red wine.
NOTE: if you're making a meat sauce, cook the meat first and use the same pan for the sauce. That'll add in a lot of extra flavor, too.
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