Amazingly Simple Tomato Sauce
Canned tomatoes simmered with butter and a halved onion until the sauce turns deep red and the fat separates. Three main ingredients and no chopping, but it needs the full forty-five minutes.
- Prep5 min
- Cook45 min
- Total50 min
- Serves6
AI-generated illustration
Contains:dairy
Ingredients
Method
- Crush the whole peeled tomatoes with your hands directly into a wide saucepan, including all the juice from the cans; hand-crushing leaves the texture uneven in a way a blender cannot.
- Add the unsalted butter, the onion halves cut side down, the kosher salt, and the granulated sugar.
- Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered at a lazy bubble for 45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes and pressing any large pieces against the side of the pan.
- The sauce is ready when it has darkened to brick red, reduced by about a third, and orange butter is pooling at the edges.
- Lift out the onion halves; they have given everything they have, though chopping them and stirring them back in is no crime.
- Stir in the torn basil leaves off the heat and toss with hot pasta, thinning with a splash of pasta water if needed.
Notes
- Whole peeled tomatoes are consistently better than pre-crushed or diced, which are treated with calcium chloride to hold their shape and never break down.
- It keeps 5 days refrigerated and freezes well in a jar with an inch of headspace.
