Do you make your own spaghetti sauce or do you buy it? This simple tomato based sauce flavoured with only garlic, fresh basil and a touch of oregano is as simple as it is delicious.
I stopped relying on mass produced spaghetti sauce almost a decade ago. All it took was discovering how easy it is to make my own!
I’ve had this recipe for a long time but didn’t think to share it. I guess I always felt like it was so basic that it didn’t deserve space on my blog. How wrong I was!!
I realised that this recipe should be added to this site after seeing how many jars of store-bought sauce are in the average pantry. It used to be me.
Before spending time in Italy, it would have never occurred to me to make my own spaghetti sauce. Every time I tried it ended up tasting like straight up canned tomatoes, harsh and acidic.
This changed after watching an Italian friend make regular spaghetti sauce. It blew me away because she made fresh tasting and flavourful sauce while barely using any ingredients.
I’ve learned to love Italian cooking in part because they make the most incredible food with a small number of basic ingredients. I’ve featured many of these recipes in my Italian Recipe Collection.
This recipe is a classic example. It is so good because it is true to the Italian cooking rule that the best food comes from the best ingredients!
A delicious and fresh tasting pasta sauce. The fresh basil added at the end is essential. This sauce can be left chunky (which I prefer) or blended in a food processor to a smooth sauce. Serve spooned over cooked pasta with plenty of parmesan cheese.
Secret to the best tasting sauce
Simple recipes like this make it so important to start with quality ingredients. If the canned tomatoes are not ripe or lacking flavour, the sauce will not be impressive.
The secret to good sauce, then, is the best quality canned tomatoes like the ones that come from Italy, where they use ripe and fresh tomatoes.
Tomatoes from the best quality cans are fully ripe and bursting with flavour, which will all go into your sauce and make it off the scale delicious!
If you can afford it, don’t buy the cheapest canned tomatoes! Be a bit more picky when it comes to your food, go for quality, not quantity and you will discover how much easier cooking is!
Truth is quality ingredients do all the cooking for you for you! It’s truly magical.
The sauce I am sharing today is basic, with only 6 ingredients. It’s sweet and fragrant with NO SUGAR added, which makes it so much better than most canned sauces!
So many store-bought causes have added sugar as they don’t use quality tomatoes and have to add sweetness to their sauces somehow. Added sugar is used to compensate, but it’s not a great approach.
I don’t want added sugar in my spaghetti sauce. I want it to come naturally from sun-ripened tomatoes!
Once you have a sauce like this in your cupboard, there are an infinite number of uses for it. It will stand on its own when coating any pasta, or can be used with meatballs, chicken, or anything you want!
We have lots more fantastic pasta recipes including:
When to add fresh basil to a tomato sauce?
FAQ
When should I add fresh basil to pasta sauce?
Do you chop basil for pasta sauce?
Should you add Basil to spaghetti sauce?
The basil flavor will be at its peak in time to get everyone to the table for dinner. Spaghetti is a popular dish enjoyed by many people with different variants, but here’s why you should be adding basil to spaghetti sauce.
How do I take basil?
Basil leaves come from the mint leaf family, with the botanical name Ocimum Basilium. This serrated leaf has long been used as medicine in China as it contains vitamins C, A, and K. Basil can be used fresh to be mixed in salad, as a garnish, or mixed in cooked foods. They can be boiled and served like a tea drink. In fact, there is evidence that people have consumed basil tea for thousands of years, which was done in the Asian region of India or Bangladesh.
Can you add fresh basil to tomato sauce?
While dried basil or woodsy herbs like rosemary can withstand the heat and should be added at the beginning of the cooking process, fresh basil will end up shriveled at the bottom of the dish (via StackExchange ). Instead, allow the sauce to cook until thickened and almost ready to be served.
How do you cook fresh basil pasta?
Usually, fresh basil has to be added to a fresh sauce (means a sauce made by fresh tomatoes, to serve it “today”) just at the end of cooking, 3-4 minutes before you turn your fire off. Then let it rest some minutes more, while you cook the pasta. You have to light the fire again at end, because you need a very hot sauce over your very hot pasta.