Mother SAUCE #2:
CLASSIC RED SAUCEA basic red sauce is an essential staple in any Western
cook’s pantry. Countless Italian-American restaurants are
based on this sauce.
Marcella Hazan’s recipe for tomato sauce may deliver the
most culinary bang for your buck that you’ll ever see. It’s so
simple it doesn’t even need a full recipe—just simmer a 28-
ounce can of whole tomatoes with 5 tablespoons unsalted
butter and an onion split in half, crushing the tomatoes
against the sides of the pot with a spoon—but the flavor you
end up with is rich, fresh, and perfectly balanced. It’s the
butter that makes the difference. Unlike olive oil, butter
contains natural emulsifiers that help keep the sauce nice
and creamy. And the dairy sweetness works in tandem with
the sweetness of the onions while rounding out the harsher
acidic notes of the tomatoes.
Building from where Marcella leaves off, it’s not a far
jump to a classic Italian-American marinara sauce—tomato
sauce flavored with garlic, oregano, and olive oil. Butter is
still essential for smoothing out the rough edges of the
acidic tomatoes, but here I like to substitute extra-virgin
olive oil for half of it to bring some extra complexity into
the mix. I make it in quadruple batches and store it in sealed
Ball jars. Bottle while hot in sterile jars, seal them, and allow
the sauce to cool to room temperature before refrigerating.
It’ll keep in the fridge for at least a month, ready to reheat