Simple Italian Tomato Sauce
By: Alex Pachetti
Published: Saturday, December 5, 2009 - 6:21am

Ingredients




4 cans of whole, peeled, Italian tomatoes
6 garlic cloves, peeled
Olive Oil (enough to coat the bottom of a pot)
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt
Pepper 6-10 good grinds
5 big leaves fresh basil (optional)

Preparation

1 Heat the pot over a medium heat 2 Add the olive oil to the pot 3 Add the garlic cloves and let them slowly get hot. 4 When they start to sizzle, turn them and press them down with a fork (don't brown) 5 Strain in tomatoes or break them up with your hands keeping the hard part out  Stir in onion powder, sugar, salt and pepper 6 Simmer slowly, stir occasionally until the sauce is thick (will splatter out of the pot) 7 Add in the basil in the last 20 minutes or so of cooking (optional) 8 Four cans will take about 1 hour and 45 minutes on a low boil.

About


The best thing about this sauce is that it can be made in advance and frozen and kept for a few months. The other thing I tell people is that once you "master" this basic sauce, it can be the foundation for many other tomato-based sauces - alla vodka, arrabiata, amatriciana....