Tomato sauce vs Red gravy

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salt and pepper

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The debate continues. So what really is the difference? I my opinion a tomato sauce is something that is cooked at a fairly quick time, requiring no deluding of ingredients and is served at the ready. Some tomato sauce is not cooked at all, for instance, pizza sauce.
However, Red gravy is cooked for long periods of time, 3 or 4 hours and liquids are added to the tomatoes. Water, wine are most often used. Then reduced to the desired thickness. It can be made with or with out meat, I like to add sausage, meatballs and a lamb shank. Much more flavor is add when adding meat. As with stews, the flavors are more enhanced as time goes by, say the next day or two. Red gravy is usually made in larger quanties too. It freezes well and can be used in many various ways.
 
Your right, the debate continues.

I'm not sure there is a right answer to this question. I suspect the various terms for a tomato based sauce to go on pasta evolved over time and varied based on the region(s) of Italy a specific group if immigrants came from.

You suggest a long slow cooked sauce is a gravy. I have seem recipes for such a sauce referred to as a Sunday Ragu.

I usually see uncooked sauces referred to as fresh tomato sauce.
 
for me .. its always been called tomato sauce .. and i think the red gravy throws me off due to it is not constructed like any gravy i personally have ever made ..
but i do think red gravy is a cool name ...
 
I still go with Julia. A gravy has a meat basis. A sauce doesn't. :angel:

so if it has meat its gravy? i am not a big "red gravy" maker ..
but i assume you can make it without meat ?

and what about country "gravy" .. does that make it a sauce if the meat is omitted?
 
Did I miss a debate :huh:

I've never used an uncooked pizza sauce either, whether I've bought a commercially prepared pizza sauce or made my own. It's cooked when it's made and then cooked/reheated on the pizza. It's typically more heavily seasoned than regular sauce because you don't use as much.

In these parts red gravy is simply a term for spaghetti sauce. It's not a common term, but you hear it now and then. And spaghetti sauce can describe the sauce no matter what it's going in or on. As in, "Put extra spaghetti sauce on my meatball sub". They'll know what you mean.

Sunday gravy to me is a sauce with the chunks of meat like pieces of pork or veal. Not to be confused with hamburger or sausage.

Tomato sauce is used to make spaghetti sauce. They sell it right in there with the diced tomatoes, chunky tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, tomato puree... all the endless array of canned tomato products. Some tomato sauce comes seasoned though, and that could be used on its own on pasta. I've never tried one I liked and it's usually thin anyway, so maybe it needs turned into a spaghetti sauce, or red gravy. Or poured over stuffed peppers and cooked for hours anyway.

And then there's the jars of Ragu, Prego, Newman's Own... I suppose those are a tomato sauce, but aren't they always preceded with an adjective, Like chunky garden, garlic and basil...? I wouldn't exactly call them a straight tomato sauce.

hmmmm :huh:
 
I think of gravy being Sunday Gravy, i.e., a sauce made by braising cuts of beef and/or pork in tomato sauce all day.
Tomato sauce is a catch-all term for marinara, pomodoro, sunday gravy, Escoffier's sauce tomate, etc., and is not a specific type of sauce.

Just my opinion.

I think the real debate lies in Marinara vs. Pomodoro
 
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Exactly. This reminds me of the drawn out boiling-vs-simmering thread that someone started awhile back. People get too caught up in semantics. You say gravy, I say sauce (or vice versa). It's just a name.

I agree. It's just another topic to Discuss about Cooking.
 
Exactly. This reminds me of the drawn out boiling-vs-simmering thread that someone started awhile back. People get too caught up in semantics. You say gravy, I say sauce (or vice versa). It's just a name.

As a somewhat OCD editor and former computer desktop support specialist, I have to disagree :) It's much easier to discuss things when we all use the same vocabulary as much as possible. Can't tell you how many times I was trying to troubleshoot a computer problem and people would say, well that's just what I like to call it. PITA.
 
There's OCD and OCDer...I could describe your injury in medspeak and most people would have no clue what your injury truly was. A bruise to your cheekbone is much clearer than a hematoma to the periorbital zygomatic arch.

I do agree that computerese should be more standard, it is a young science. However, Cooking has been around since the dawn of time and many descriptions have been used for so long it's almost impossible to get a consensus on what to call a technique, etc.
 

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