CLASSIC TOMATO SAUCE

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Classic Tomato Sauce image

Since everyone has his or her version of this sauce, we spent a lot of time getting this one right. No surprise, the best results came from using the best ingredients. When it comes to tomato sauce, using poor quality canned tomatoes can leave an acidic or tinny taste in your mouth. So while it is a bit more expensive, we like to use Pomi brand chopped tomatoes (you know, the ones that come in a box). The sauce starts with a careful "sweating" of onions (cooking them slowly, until translucent but not brown, to extract as much flavor as possible), and the flavor continues to build from a nice, long, low-heat simmering after the tomatoes are added.

Provided by Daniel Holzman

Categories     Sauce     Tomato

Yield Makes 7 cups

Number Of Ingredients 8

1/4 cup olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon chopped fresh oregano or 1/2 teaspoon dried
2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 teaspoons salt or to taste
2 tablespoons tomato paste
Two 26-ounce boxes Pomi Chopped Tomatoes or two 28-ounce cans whole plum tomatoes, chopped with their liquid

Steps:

  • Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions, bay leaf, oregano, garlic, and salt and cook, stirring often, until the onions are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.
  • Add the tomato paste and continue cooking for 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and stir constantly until the sauce begins to boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 1 hour, stirring every 5 minutes or so to prevent the sauce on the bottom of the pot from burning. Taste and season with additional salt, if desired. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

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