Store-bought pasta sauce comes in limited varieties, and most brands tend to be loaded with sugar. Learning how to make your own sauce at home allows you to use fresh ingredients that are more health-conscious and create unique flavors for your spaghetti.
General Tips When Making Spaghetti Sauce
When making homemade spaghetti sauce, there's a few tricks you can use to heighten your sauce's quality:
- Use tomato paste when trying to thicken a tomato sauce -- it allows you to retain all the flavors of the tomatoes while making the sauce less watery.
- You can use a slow cooker for tomato sauces if you want to let it sit while you're at work. Sauces require a low-and-slow cooking method with lots of time to simmer. While slow cookers are great when you're out and about, using a pan or skillet allows you to make sauces more quickly and have more control with how it comes out.
- The quality of ingredients makes the difference between a good sauce and a great one. Roma tomatoes, fresh herbs such as basil, thyme, rosemary and oregano, olive oil, garlic and onions are all staples in an outstanding tomato sauce.
Four Homemade Spaghetti Sauce Recipes
Simple Spaghetti Sauce
This simple recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce uses a unique ingredient -- parmesan rind. The rind is tossed into the sauce while it simmers, giving off the great flavors of parmesan without being overly cheesy. This, combined with a classic tomato sauce, bell peppers, mushrooms and Italian sausage, make for a filling, delicious sauce.
Classic Homemade Spaghetti Sauce
This is a tasty recipe for a unique tomato sauce that uses fennel seeds and chicken broth to provide different flavors, while also using standard ingredients such as tomatoes, onions and garlic. This, along with the sugar and tomato paste, make for a sweeter, more intricate spaghetti sauce.
Bev's Spaghetti Sauce
The selling point of this spaghetti sauce is the pepperoni and red pepper flakes, which makes a tomato sauce with some extra kick to it. The brown sugar combines with the water and chicken broth to create complex flavors, and the black olives and parmesan make this one of the most complete homemade spaghetti sauces you can work with.