I picked up a jar of “totally not our own brand budget label” pasta sauce from, of all places, Sainsbury’s the other day. It was diabolically bad, it was little more than red water of a disturbing consistency. I salvaged it in the end but I’d have been better served by starting from a jar of passata.
I'd generally agree that I can make something better myself, but between the added flavor from roasted meatballs + veg + herbs and seasoning, and this being implicitly a mid-week meal (it's 10min prep, in the oven, get shit together for the gym, add sauce, back in the oven, switch oven off and leave it to slow cook for a couple of hours while I'm out). Passata + minced carrot , celery etc would work too it's just turning 10min prep time into 30min stood at the stove.
Yup.
Really though, pasta sauce isn't hard. Tomatoes of some form (canned chopped, crushed, passata, whatever) as a base, dried basil, dried oregano, few twists of pepper, garlic puree, tomato puree and half a ladle of cooking water from the pasta and you've got something easily comparable or better than anything you'll get out of a branded jar at three times the price.
Anything involving effort I'd batch-cook. I do a world-class pizza sauce which I'm really proud of, but I'll turn out a litre at a time and freeze it in dollops.
I did this at the weekend, superb - don't need an AGA.
https://www.agacookshop.co.uk/hot-prawn-mango-stir-fry.html
Really though, pasta sauce isn’t hard. Tomatoes of some form (canned chopped, crushed, passata, whatever) as a base, dried basil, dried oregano, few twists of pepper, garlic puree, tomato puree and half a ladle of cooking water from the pasta
To put an interesting spin on pasta and tomato sauce.. Assassin's Spaghetti is really nice, as an ingredient list its pasta and tomato sauce but bumped in a really interesting direction in the way its cooked - you don't boil the spaghetti first but braise it in the sauce, adding a little at a time like making risotto. Results in a rich, dense sticky coating on the pasta rather than a sauce - Its a bit like the nice chewy bits around the edge of a lasagne.
Needs a nice bigs flat frying pan and if you're cooking for two it works best cooking its in two pans at the same time
That spaghetti looks interesting. Might have to give that ago. Definitely need a generous grating of parmesan though.
