To share with you the best pasta sauce recipe ever

[brightonroc]

It's the most simple sauce ever and it's amazing!

Chop an onion super small (put in blender if you can until almost mush)

Fry for 3 mins

Add a finely chopped garlic clove

Fry for 2 mins

Add a tin of chopped tomatoes

Add 100mls water and a chicken stock cube

Stir

Cook for 10-30mins

Add handful chopped basil

Pepper to taste

done

Enjoy!!

that sounds like the base of any bolognese type recipe...apart from the chicken stock cube...very basic OP! Have you really only just worked this out?

Cinnamon. Cinnamon is the secret to an amazing tomato based sauces. And a dash of lemon juice. It just brings the tomatoes into a different level.

@ billHadersnewwife
What a very MN reply! Be unimpressed if you like but spare us the bitchiness

Not sure about the chicken stock cube in that recipe, OP.

One square of 70% dark chocolate in any sauce using tinned tomatoes transforms it.

I prefer a marinara.

@AllergicToAMop yes! There's a BBC Good Food recipe called Venetian Duck Ragu (too lazy to link) that has cinnamon in the sauce. I've made it with and without as I'm not much of a fan of cinnamon but you can really taste the difference. Adds a richness to the tomatoes. Yum. Might need to make that next week.

Nothing is better than Marcella Hazan's tomato sauce with butter and onion. That is the best pasta sauce ever.

I put a stockcube in my pasta sauce recipe it does the job 😁

I put a beef stock cube/pot and an oxo in mine.

Who would like to hear my recipe for ice cubes?

Seriously though I do think that adding a stock cube to tomato based dishes really makes a difference.

Half a teaspoon of sugar!

Sugar!!! You need sugar!

Spoon of sugar, dash of balsamic and finely chopped anchovies fried at beginning

Or a dash of aged balsamic

@f00k it does! Use just a pinch of it in any tomato based sauce.
Magical dust that cinnamon (or more likely cassia tbh...)

Chicken stock? Grim. No thanks.

at all the additions as the thread progresses. I love these threads.

After all, you did ask if you were being unreasonable.

YY calypso Marcella Hazan is the best. Her recipes absolutely work.
A chicken stock cube is not necessary in a tomato sauce for pasta if your seasoning is appropriate, after all, they are mostly salt. also any chicken, apart from chicken livers, in a pasta sauce is weird and un-Italian. According to my Italian friends 😄
But you might need a squeeze of lemon juice or pinch of sugar, depending on the sweetness or sharpness of the tomatoes.

@allergictoamop & @formerbabe, I am with you both - anchovies and cinnamon 😋

@Confusedbeetle that post may have sound bitchy, but I get it. Came here thinking I will find recipe which will make me want to dash off into the kitchen and try it... What I found was essentially a basic sauce base...

No, the secret is slow cooking. Onions, very finely minced (and peeled, so no string) celery, garlic and one small carrot minced to cook a sofritta in olive oil. Then diced peppers, tinned tomatoes/passata cooked very slowely for an hour with a dash of red wine, vegan stock powder, (I'm not vegan, it just tastes better than the others) fresh thyme and fresh basil.
If you slow cook, no need to add sugar or chocolate - I do that if I'm in a hurry. And definitely no cinnamon. I have an aversion to cinnamon in most savoury dishes. Even a pinch of it dominates the flavour.

Thanks for the recommendations for the Venetian duck ragout recipe @f00k. I am so lacking in inspiration for new recipes, but that one looks worth trying.

Re tomato sauce, I'm another who swears by a teaspoon of sugar.

That’s a normal pomodoro sauce surely?