Pomodoro Sauce (Italian Tomato Sauce)

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that enjoys cooking.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
jenny, i understand your point, but i doubt you could tell the difference if a basic sauce were added to the other ingredients, instead of building it. adding a little tomato sauce instead of paste and tomatoes, as you've said, is only a small part of the sauce, so the difference would be hard to tell, imo....


We'll agree to disagree then. The basil and oregano would throw the flavor off considerably, IMO. Plus there are already onion, garlic, carrot, etc. in the sauce. Bolognese is made by building layers of flavors, primarily with the vegetables and meat. They cook together. Substituting sauce with herbs and vegetables for plain tomatoes will substantially alter the taste. To my palate at least.

Now I'm jonesing for Marcella's sauce .... maybe this weekend.

:chef:
 
ok, jenny. point taken. i respect your culinary knowledge, so maybe you could tell the diff.
again, it's a small part of the bolognese, so i doubt most would notice the variations.

but, without the sauces in front of us to actually taste, it's all a guess.

where's marcella's?
 
Last edited:
This is an interesting recipe I will try it out or at least some of the things in it. Certainly there is no orthodox way of making tomato sauce everyone has thier own secrets and tricks. This recipe sounds like a good versitle base sauce which is what it was posted as. The butternut suqash is a new one for me but I am intrigued as a matter if fact I was eyeing butternut squash the other day trying to think of a use for it.

I come from an Italian-American home where we ate many different tomato sauces. "Gravy" was made on Sunday all day and was a very meat heavy thick sauce (southern style), delicious but time consuming and impractical for me to make now.

On the Bolognese issue my Mom once went by recipe (this is a northern sauce and not part of our family tradition) and made a classical Bolognese (from Silver Spoon i believe) I was amazed at the lack of tomato it was more a meat and vegetables taste... quite unlike what your local red-sauce joint passes for Bolognese. This would make a nice base for a meat sauce though if not a true Bolognese.
 
The squash is, as bucky noted, there for the sweetness it adds to the sauce and it also helps balance the pH of the sauce so it isn't far too acidic, making it difficult to balance on the plate.

The squash was a revelation of mine (not authentic, to my knowledge) about a year ago as I was trying my daughter's baby food. The strained squash just came off as a perfect flavor compliment to the heavy, acidic tomato sauce.
 
Also, let me add that this wasn't meant to be some sort of "be-all end-all" tomato sauce. It's my take on the classic that I noted before I went into the recipe. My bad for not being more specific.
 
lol, there you are weeks! i'm takin' a lot of flak here.
c'mon buddy, help me out.

tell 'em your grandma made it this way, and since her passing the best way that you can honor her life was to make her "authentic" sauce!

that'll put them back on their brooms a bit.
 
:ROFLMAO::LOL:

When we talk about pomodoro sauce, the real stuff I had when I was in Italy briefly several years ago, I went to what must have been a half-dozen little mom and pop bistros and restaurants outside of Aviano AFB there and gotten a different sauce every time. Granted I wasn't very adventurous, I pretty much ordered simple stuff like Chicken Parmesan or Lasagna. You know, the typical American stuff. It wasn't until a few years later that I developed a bit more adventure in my food tastes. Point being, though, that I don't think the Italians can even agree on what pomodoro sauce is supposed to definitively be.

Edit: I have to say that it is nice to get this much attention for what, for me, was just a simple and very tasty sauce.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for piping in with the clarification Weeks that the addition of the squash was your invention & not part of a classic Pomodoro recipe.

It does look like an interesting Italian sauce recipe to try, but it's not a "Pomodoro" (regardless of Bucky continuing to insist that it is - lol), which really is the most basic of Italian sauces with the most minimal amount of ingredients. That's why Pomodoro is considered an Italian "mother sauce". Some folks & cookbooks consider the term Pomodoro interchangeable with Marinara, but I think Pomodoro is even more basic.
 
You know that if you google "classical italian pomodoro sauce" this thread is the top result? And it isn't even what one might consider a "classical" pomodoro, either. Hilarious.

Anyways, I was going to jump into the discussion about authentic versus not or whatever, but it all seems a bit academic to me. For anything to claim to be the one true authentic recipe would require two things: a) codification of a standard, b) agreement upon that standard by the majority of the profession. Classical French cooking has that in Careme and Escoffier. Where is Classical Italian food codified into a standard? Seriously, I have yet to find a definitive source for all things "authentic" Italian.
 
Weeks - I sure hope this little, gosh, I'm not sure what to call it but I won't call it the Welcoming Committee :LOL:, incident won't deter you from sharing any other recipes.

I sometimes put matchstick carrots in my spaghetti sauce - love the texture and taste.

I have put pumpkin in my chili so I can only assume the squash gives that same velvety smooth underlying texture/taste also.

Thanks for the recipe - MOST of us just read them and enjoy the personal spins put on them :LOL:
 
In her book and reprinted here

Sometimes I use veal or even some pork with the beef.

WEEKS! Glad you popped back in!:)


thanks, jenny. copied and printed for a future attempt.



breezy, i never said it was authentic, but as weeks has just clarified, it wasn't intended to be presented as such, nor could it probably have been. that, my retentive friend, was my insistence.:-p
(i happen to agree that pomodoro isn't much more than tomatoes, olive oil, and maybe a bit of herbs and/or something to cut acidity)


weeks, your grandma's ;);) recipe will be tried even sooner. i've been looking for a way to get a certain consistency with my smoother tomato sauces. thanks again.
 
Anyways, I was going to jump into the discussion about authentic versus not or whatever, but it all seems a bit academic to me. For anything to claim to be the one true authentic recipe would require two things: a) codification of a standard, b) agreement upon that standard by the majority of the profession. Classical French cooking has that in Careme and Escoffier. Where is Classical Italian food codified into a standard? Seriously, I have yet to find a definitive source for all things "authentic" Italian.

Well, I have to disagree with that. I see no reason why "professionals" are the only ones who can weigh in on what a certain dish consists of.

If I say I'm making chicken piccata, people familiar with Italian cooking (unless they're Ryan on Top Chef ;)) will know that it's a chicken cutlet pan-fried with a pan sauce made with lemon and butter, or if I'm making veal marsala, they will know it's a pan-fried veal cutlet with a pan sauce made of mushrooms and marsala wine. That doesn't mean there can't be variations (broth and/or wine for the piccata, various kinds of mushrooms for the marsala, add capers or shallots or not), but if there was no standard, people wouldn't know what I meant when I mentioned those dishes.

I'm pretty sure that if I went to a bookstore and looked up recipes in five Italian cookbooks for pomodoro, piccata and marsala sauces, they would be very, very similar.
 
Last edited:
Pomodoro (Italian for "Tomato") sauce is the mother sauce of about a half-dozen different Italian sauces. You can go from this recipe to any number of permutations on the standard American "spaghetti sauce", and it also makes a great base for old classical Italian sauces such as Puttanesca or Bolognese.

This is a crock pot recipe unless you have 4 hours to sit and babysit a stockpot full of sauce so it doesn't burn.

You will need:
6-8 cans diced tomatoes (or dice them yourself!)
1 tbsp crushed basil leaves
1 tbsp ground oregano
4 peeled carrots
4-6 cloves of garlic, minced
half of a red onion, minced
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 bell pepper, small dice
1 butternut squash, small dice (no seeds!)
salt and fresh-ground pepper (just have some on hand)
1 can tomato paste....

Thank you for sharing your recipe, Weeks. I've prepared tomato sauce in the slow cooker/CP, and you are right, in that you don't have to babysit the sauce on the stove.

Here's the def of Pomodoro/Tomato sauce, as weeks explained;)
An Italian term for "tomato" which translates to "golden apple" referring to the first tomatoes grown that were golden yellow in color with an apple-like shape. Since tomatoes are such a large part of Italian cooking, pomodoro or pomodori (the plural form) is a common term used in reference to food dishes with tomatoes. As examples, pomodori al forno is a recipe for tomatoes with garlic, al pomodoro means "with tomato", pomodori secchi refers to sun-dried tomatoes, and pomodoro sauce refers to a tomato sauce.
Pomodoro: Cooking Terms: RecipeTips.com


If I may ask a few questions about the recipe...

What size can of tomatoes & do you drain the liquid?

1 tbl crushed basil leaves & 1 tbl ground oregano & 1/2 tsp olive oil? The ratio of dried & fresh have me a bit thrown off, & why only 1/2 tsp olive oil? When I make sauce in the sc/cp, I add 1/2 of the seasonings/fresh herbs (in larger quantity toward the end of cooking time). Just sharing my experience w the cp. What does the 1/2 tbl of olive oil add to the dish? (Not a challenge, here - just asking about the ingreds.)

Do you peel the squash & are you partial to Red onions?

IMO, folks have lost sight of the recipe, & are debating about about the name. When cooking w a sc/cp, I often add in ingredients I have on hand - and I think squash is a great idea -- and doesn't need to serve a purpose other than to add flavor! Thank you for sharing your recipe.:chef:
 
Last edited:
Butternut squash? I have to agree with Constance here - even in my old-school Italian cookbooks or from my old-school Italian friends (some direct from the old country), butternut squash is not an ingredient in Italian gravy. Where'd you find that ingredient?

Yea, sorry, nothing personal but, the only thing that should be in sauce is basil, salt, and garlic. Now, if, when you cook you want to add a few things like mushrooms, or meat, or even.....yea, butternut squash, go for it.

When I cook my sauce I put Red Wine and suger, along with some sort of meat. If I am making meatballs, I cook them slow in the sauce. I cook the same way my grandmother cooked in Calabria, so this REALLY IS the "old world" style.
 
Yea, sorry, nothing personal but, the only thing that should be in sauce is basil, salt, and garlic. Now, if, when you cook you want to add a few things like mushrooms, or meat, or even.....yea, butternut squash, go for it.

When I cook my sauce I put Red Wine and suger, along with some sort of meat. If I am making meatballs, I cook them slow in the sauce. I cook the same way my grandmother cooked in Calabria, so this REALLY IS the "old world" style.

mine only has onion/galic, salt, olive oil and tomatoes. my mum likes putting basil in hers, but dad doesn't particularly like it hehe, shes from Calabria too :)
and yeah meatballs....cooked long. I have never put sugar though..what does it do for the sauce? maybe i should try...

btw....ur not supposed to be eating pasta right?
:LOL:
 
Back
Top Bottom