Homemade tomato sauce

✅ The essentials

A tomato sauce is an onion you sweat, garlic, tomatoes, and twenty minutes on low heat without a lid. With two cans of crushed tomatoes, it is as good as with fresh tomatoes, and better in winter. It goes with everything: pasta, pizza, meatballs, gratin, eggs, and it freezes.

🍳 The method

1. Sweat a sliced onion in two tablespoons of olive oil, on low heat, five minutes, without colouring it.
2. Add two chopped garlic cloves, one minute.
3. Pour in two 400 g cans of crushed tomatoes, or a kilo of fresh tomatoes cut in dice. Add a teaspoon of sugar, a bay leaf or a sprig of thyme if you have one.
4. Let it simmer on low heat, without a lid, twenty minutes, stirring now and then. It thickens and loses its sharpness.
5. Salt, pepper, taste. A drizzle of olive oil and basil at the end if you have some.

⚖️ The quantities

Two 400 g cans make about 600 ml of sauce, that is four to six people with pasta. It keeps four days in the fridge and three months in the freezer, in portions.

⏱️ How long it takes

Thirty minutes, twenty of which it simmers on its own while you cook the pasta.

🩹 If it goes wrong

Too sharp: one more pinch of sugar, or a knob of butter. Too thin: five more minutes on medium heat, no lid. Too thick: a little pasta cooking water. It stuck to the bottom: do not scrape the burnt part, pour the top into another pot.

🍽️ Make it tonight

Pasta with homemade tomato sauce, in thirty minutes, sauce and pasta at the same time. Next week, the same sauce under the meatballs.

🥘 The linked base recipe: Homemade tomato sauce (serves 4 to 6)

• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 cans (400 g) crushed tomatoes, or 1 kg fresh tomatoes
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 bay leaf or 1 sprig of thyme (optional)
• Salt, pepper