With this extremely useful tomato pasta sauce in your kitchen, you are never far from a quick meal. It is great simply stirred through pasta, and even doubles as pizza sauce in a pinch. Once you have made one batch, you will wonder how you ever did without it.
Total Time Investment: 5 hours 10 minutes
Once upon a time, my pantry cupboard was filled with jars and packages of convenience foods that only required the addition of meat (never vegetables) to make a ‘complete’ meal. And my favourite jar by far was the tomato pasta sauce. That jar didn’t require anything else to be added to it, and so as long as I had pasta in the cupboard and a green container of dried Parmesan (shudder) dinner was sorted.
Somewhere along the line I learnt to cook, and whilst I no longer rely on convenience foods to put a meal on the table, I still need a few tricks up my sleeve to cope with those nights when life gets a little bit busy. Homemade tomato pasta sauce is one such short-cut I employ for a speedy but delicious meal.
My friend Janice gave me this recipe a few years ago now. Or should I say, she gave me half a recipe. Janice has a way of telling me a recipe, leaving out a few crucial ingredients or cooking steps, then filling in the missing pieces at a later date. After making her meatball recipe for years, I discovered that she crumbs her meatballs prior to cooking. A little detail she left out when originally imparting her recipe. So in no way is this version a slavish recreation of her original tomato pasta sauce recipe, as I have no idea what the original recipe is. The sauce itself is so useful, however, that I always try to have some in the house.
This recipe makes a lot of tomato pasta sauce; I can get eight meals out of one batch. And I will admit that it takes a decent amount of time to cook, a good four to five hours, however for most of the time you can get on with other things whilst the sauce slowly simmers on the stove. Make this recipe one weekend when you have no plans to go out, and by the end of the day you will have a large pot of glorious sauce, and that smug feeling of knowing you have a few meals in the bank.
Ingredient Substitutions
I use a large 2.5kg tin of tomatoes purchased from my local Italian deli to make this sauce, but just buy the biggest tins you can find. You will need at least six of the standard tomato tins to make this recipe.
Tomato passata is also called tomato sauce or tomato puree in different parts of the world. Use a sauce that contains only tomatoes, and maybe onion and herbs. Any tomato sauce made with vinegar cannot be substituted in this recipe.
The alcohol in the white wine will cook out during the cooking process. If you don’t wish to use it, just leave it out. No substitution is necessary. Red wine can readily be used in place of the white wine.
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Preserving Tomato Pasta Sauce
Unless you have a really large family, with many ravenous teenagers, you will need to put aside some of this large batch of tomato pasta sauce for other meals. I prefer to can (bottle) my sauce using standard canning practices, as this frees up valuable freezer space. I have kept the sauce on the shelf for over twelve months using this method.
If canning is not your thing, freeze the sauce in meal size portions. Spoon meal size portions (I recommend 2 cup portions) of the sauce into zip lock bags, and place the bags flat on a baking sheet in the freezer. Allow them to freeze solid before moving them within the freezer for better storage. Defrost the sauce overnight in the fridge, or rapidly defrost the sauce by sitting the bag in a sink full of warm (not hot) water.
Using Your Tomato Pasta Sauce
Your large batch of homemade tomato pasta sauce can be used in so many different ways to put together a speedy dinner. At its simplest, I stir the sauce through freshly cooked pasta for a quick dinner. Use the sauce for baked Italian meatballs, or stir it through cooked gnocchi for a quick gnocchi bake.
Top chicken schnitzels with pasta sauce and cheese for a quick chicken parmigiana, or spread the sauce over pizza bases if you are out of pizza sauce. The sauce also makes a great pre-made base for easy slow cooker meals. Add some meat and a few vegetables, put on the lid and walk away.
With a batch of my tomato pasta sauce in your kitchen, you are never far from a quick meal. Best of all you know exactly what is in it. Unlike that store-bought jar.
A Really Useful Tomato Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
- 180 ml (3/4 cup) olive oil
- 6 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 2 large onions chopped
- 3 large stalks celery chopped
- 1 x 2500g (88oz) tin whole peeled plum tomatoes
- 2 x 750ml (24 oz) bottles tomato passata
- 250 ml (1 cup) white wine
- 2 bay leaves
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 3 Tablespoons chopped parsley
- Salt & black pepper
Instructions
- Heat the oil in a large pot, then add the garlic, onion and celery.
- Saute the vegetables over a low - medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the vegetables have softened. Do not allow them to brown.
- Add the remainder of the ingredients and bring the pot to the boil.
- Reduce the heat to low.
- Simmer the sauce for four to five hours, stirring occasionally, until the sauce has reduced and thickened. I crush the whole tomatoes into the sauce after it has been simmering for about two to three hours.
- Allow the sauce to cool, then divide into meal size portions. I recommend dividing the sauce into 2 cup portions.
- Either freeze or can according to your preference.
Notes
Nutrition
* This post was originally published in 2014. It has been substantially updated from the original.
Tania, I’m going to try this! Cheers
It’s really great to have on hand for quick dinners Carole. Enjoy!
What is tomato passata? Tomato paste maybe? I’m in U.S. and never heard of this.
Hi Lisa. It gets confusing with all the different terminology doesn’t it 🙂 I did a little research, and I think what we call tomato passata is what you call tomato sauce. It should be a thick-ish but still pourable sauce that contains just pureed tomatoes, although sometimes it can also have onion and herbs in it. When we make our own, we include tomatoes, onions and basil. Nothing else. Tomato paste is (here anyway) a thick, concentrated reduction of this tomato sauce. It contains little liquid and is spreadable, and is not a suitable alternative for passata. I hope that helps. Let me know if you need further clarification.
Lisa,
You can substitute passata with tomato purée (you can add red onion and basil in it). Alternatively, you can purée the tomatoes by running canned tomatoes through a sieve. The important thing, I think, is that the tomatoes should be uncooked, devoid of seeds, and be thick but of a pourable consistency. Tania, is this correct? Many BBC programs mention the use of this ingredient and that’s when I looked it up.
Tania,
Thanks for the lovely recipe. I’m from India, and we get most of the stuff here so I’m definitely going to try this out!
Hi Dhenuka, Passata and tomato puree are also interchangeable terms in some countries (more confusion:( – I need to update this post to reflect this) so yes what you have said is correct. The tomatoes don’t need to be uncooked though. The passata I use is cooked, but is, as you say, a pourable consistency. I then boil passata down further for pasta & pizza sauces.
I hope you like the recipe. It is great to have on hand for quick dinners, and I recently used it for a super quick stew which was fantastic.
Hi Tania,
If you were to cook beef mince into this recipe too, how much would you recommend?
Hi Michael, I don’t cook the beef mince in this particular recipe. If you wanted to add meat to the dish, I would suggest you make my bolognaise sauce instead. It is also packed with vegetables, and also makes a decent amount so you will still have enough to freeze. The recipe is here https://thecookspyjamas.com/kitchen-basics-a-simple-bolognaise-sauce/ I hope that helps. If not, please let me know.
Thank you for a lovely recipe, I was just wondering if you could cook this in a slow cooker/crockpot and if so how long would you cook it for. Thanks again, I have just found your blog and you are the first ‘ blogging person ‘ I have come across from Perth. I grew up in Perth and now live in Albany. It’s a small world.
Take care,
I think you could cook it in a slow cooker Heather but with a couple of precautions: I would still sweat the vegetables before adding them to the slow cooker, and I would cook it for maybe 7 – 8 hours with the lid slightly ajar to allow it to reduce. I haven’t done this myself, so don’t know if that will be long enough to thicken it. I always just cook this sauce on a weekend when I know I will be home all day. Please let me know if you do cook it in the slow cooker. I would love to hear how it turned out.
And lovely to hear from someone in my corner of the world! It is a small world indeed.