A year ago, I wrote about perhaps the most controversial of all food topics: tomato sauce. And as I said in that original diary, I do not have a dog in this fight, having grown up on Prego and Hunt’s meat sauce. I like tomato sauce, I like pasta, I like cheese—combine them in a big bowl and I’m a happy boy. But in that diary, I shared my favorite tomato sauce recipe, which takes a number of ingredients and a good chunk of time (not to be confused with my go-to weeknight tomato sauce recipe, which is basically just garlic, spices, and crushed tomatoes simmered for 10 minutes). Tonight, I’m returning to that controversial topic to share another recipe that is hands-down my new favorite. If I have half a day to kill.
Like many WFD readers, I’m sure, I am a big fan of Serious Eats, and in particular, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt. A while back, he wrote a Food Lab post on the art and science of making “the best darned Italian American red sauce you’ve ever tasted.” Strong words, I know.
I'm talking red sauce here. You might know it as gravy. The Italian-American staple that launched a thousand restaurants. While its origins are undoubtedly in Italy, the slow-cooked tomato sauce served in the red-checked tablecloth restaurants up and down the East Coast (not to mention the homes in New Jersey) is as American as it gets.
This isn't a light and fresh pomodoro sauce. It's not the kind of sauce you throw together for a weeknight meal. It's not the sauce you heat up from a jar, and it's certainly not the marinara sauce that you apply sparingly to perfectly al dente spaghetti.
This is red sauce. The slow-cooked, rib-sticking Italian-American stew designed to fill you up with equal parts flavor and pride. It's the kind of sauce for which you open up the windows while you're cooking just to make sure that everyone else in the neighborhood knows what you're up to. It's the kind of sauce kids defend the honor of in grade school. It's the kind of sauce you want your meatballs swimming in, your chicken parm bathed in, and the sauce that you want not just tossed with your spaghetti, but spooned on top in quantities that'd make a true Italian cry out in distress.
[...]
The kind of sauce that tastes like it took all day to make, because it really took all day to make.
And all day this recipe really does take to make. This is a sauce that you start on the stovetop and finish in the oven, letting it simmer in there for hours. The idea behind the recipe (and I recommend checking out Kenji’s full post) is to achieve the perfect balance of flavor—using the best San Marzano tomatoes you can find, a balance of dried and fresh herbs, onion halves and large carrot chunks so as to contribute sweetness but not overpower the sauce, the oven to concentrate and caramelize the sauce, and a final touch of umami at the end with my favorite secret ingredient.
As I continued to read and look at the pictures, my mouth salivated a little more and my breathing got a little heavier. “I need to try this recipe,” I said to myself. But one small problem. This particular recipe, as I said, begins on the stovetop and ends in the oven, so it requires a good Dutch oven, which I did not have. And so, for nearly two years, I planned to buy myself a nice porcelain enamel Dutch oven...which can be used for many things, but this sauce was at the top of the list. But you know how it goes with money—there’s always something else you need to spend it on. And then, the BF saved the day. For my birthday, he bought me...you guessed it…
A beautiful Lodge porcelain enamel Dutch oven, in exactly the color I wanted (and can I say, as an aside, that I fucking love this thing and use it for almost everything now). The BF, forever my hero. I’ll give you one guess as to the very first thing I used this new Dutch oven to make.
That’s right...the first chance I got, I gathered the ingredients…
- 4 (28-ounce) cans whole peeled tomatoes, preferably imported D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing.
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 8 cloves garlic, minced (about 3 tablespoons)
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano
- 1 medium carrot, cut into large chunks
- 1 medium onion, split in half
- 1 large stem fresh basil
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce (optional)
- 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley or basil leaves (or a mix of the two)
Really nothing that special. The oven is where the magic happens.
I’m certainly no Kenji, but this diary is about my adventure making this incredible sauce. Check out the link above for his (better) pics and commentary.
Start by crushing the tomatoes by hand in a big bowl. This is, by far, the best part of any tomato sauce recipe. Who doesn’t love playing with food? The tomatoes should be crushed pretty thoroughly, but leave it as chunky as you prefer. I like a little chunk (in both my men and my tomato sauce, amirite? Har har).
Important: Reserve three cups of these tomatoes and keep them in the fridge.
This is about as intense as the prep work is going to be. Then, mince the garlic and (this is easy) just peel the onion and carrot, halve the onion, and cut the carrot into large chunks. Hell, I didn’t even peel the carrot, because that just seemed too laborious.
Now it’s time to get cooking. And again, this is the most intense cooking you’ll need to do for this recipe. Combine the olive oil and butter in the Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add the garlic. Just cook for a few minutes, until it is fragrant. If there’s any better smell than garlic cooking in olive oil and butter, I don’t know what it is. Then, in goes the dried oregano and crushed red pepper flakes. (A note on the crushed red pepper flakes: Look, I’ll admit it, I’m kind of a wimp, so you can probably disregard this. But I used the entire teaspoon, and I thought the end result was just a tad too spicy for my own tomato sauce tastes. The BF vehemently disagreed. I’ll probably use less next time, but it’s up to you. Again, I’m a wimp.)
This is where it gets easy. Add everything else (except the optional ½ cup of fresh herbs and fish sauce). And yes, I basically used an entire small basil plant for this.
Then, partially cover, and into the oven (which is at 300 degrees Fahrenheit) it goes…
And in the oven it will stay for five to six hours. Mine was perfect after five hours, but YMMV. You’ll want to check on it every one or two hours, give it a stir, and adjust the temperature if it seems to be on the verge of burning (mine was fine). It’s going to start to reduce and caramelize after just the first hour...
If all goes well, this is what it will look like after the full five to six hours…
Very concentrated and caramelized (just on the verge of going too far, but it ended up being perfect). Remove those vegetables and basil stems and add the reserved tomatoes to freshen up the sauce. Again, this sauce is all about achieving the perfect balance. At this point, you should also taste for salt and add as much black pepper as you want. Also, this is where you add that tablespoon of fish sauce—optional, but I really do think it makes a difference and takes it to another level (and come on, it’s not that different from anchovies). Fresh herbs, while also optional, do make a difference. I didn’t have parsley on hand, but I had a ton of basil, so I just finished off the plant. The recipe doesn’t tell you to do this, but I put it back in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes, just to get it nice and hot and let everything meld.
And that...is your entire day, gone thanks to tomato sauce. But it really is worth it, I promise. That is, unless you have your nonna’s recipe, in which case you need to stick to that because I don’t want to cross Nonna. Check out the full recipe here.
As for what to do with the sauce...well...what can you not do with it? You could eat it with bread, you could use it as a base for lasagna, you could even eat it with PushMama’s meatballs. Kenji is right—it really is good enough just to eat with a spoon. But I’m a pretty simple guy. Like I said above, just give me some pasta, sauce, parmesan, and a big bowl.
What’s for dinner at your place?