Tomato Sauces

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Kevin86

Senior Cook
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
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Location
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Hey everybody

I’ve been having a conversation and thinking and reading so maybe you can help out. There’s a lot of dishes that use one version of a tomato sauce or another.
For example:
Pasta
Marinara
Pizza
Meat
Bolognese
Etc

So my 2 questions are:

1 - How many kinds of ‘tomato sauce’ are there? (not counting different recipes just different sauces)

2 - Where are the classic rules where one sauce starts and another sauce ends?

Looking at this as if I was a tourist heading to Italy trying to not offend anyone’s grandma.

Thanks
 
i think we discussed this recently. i mentioned the can besides jarred sauces.
 
I honestly don't know that the tomato sauce I make would be called. I start with some good canned San Marzano whole plum tomatoes. Fresh basil and oregano from my garden. Salt and pepper to taste, and of course, some garlic.

CD
 
I think I've tried about 6 tomato sauces, including the one with butter, the one with the San Marzano tomatoes, the one that uses Roma tomatoes, one that cooks all day, and a couple others. And honestly, I keep coming back to Classico jarred tomato sauces. I like to mix and match, using their one each of their Basil jars and one spicy jar (two are too spicy).

I'd make my own tomato or spaghetti sauce if I could just find something that I liked more than Classico.
 
In Italy it's mostly regional and traditional but a tomato sauce can be just tomatoes, nothing else either cooked or not.
 
I think I've tried about 6 tomato sauces, including the one with butter, the one with the San Marzano tomatoes, the one that uses Roma tomatoes, one that cooks all day, and a couple others. And honestly, I keep coming back to Classico jarred tomato sauces. I like to mix and match, using their one each of their Basil jars and one spicy jar (two are too spicy).

I'd make my own tomato or spaghetti sauce if I could just find something that I liked more than Classico.

Sometimes I get lazy, and buy jarred sauce. Rao's. But, when I make sauce for my friends and family, it it from scratch. Cento San Marzano DOP tomatoes as the base.

People can argue over whether homemade sauce taste's better or not, but if you look at the ingredients on any jar of sauce, you will not see "love" in the list.

I think that is true about food in general. What you do when it is just yourself you are cooking for is not necessarily the same as what you cook when you have guests coming for dinner.

CD
 
Every grandma has her own opinion.
😉🤭😂

Most of my tomato based sauces start with a can of crushed tomatoes.

They are cheaper than most bottled sauces and can be quickly adapted to most recipes with a few aromatics.
 
I've made many sauces from scratch as I believe those would be better than the jars and cans missing the "love" ingredient.
But no matter how much "love" I add to them - most still come out crappy.
Lesson learned? Homemade is not necessarily better.
 
Hey everybody

I’ve been having a conversation and thinking and reading so maybe you can help out. There’s a lot of dishes that use one version of a tomato sauce or another.
For example:
Pasta
Marinara
Pizza
Meat
Bolognese
Etc

So my 2 questions are:

1 - How many kinds of ‘tomato sauce’ are there? (not counting different recipes just different sauces)

2 - Where are the classic rules where one sauce starts and another sauce ends?

Looking at this as if I was a tourist heading to Italy trying to not offend anyone’s grandma.

Thanks

I don't think there is a "classic" tomato sauce and the number of varieties is endless. You could visit every single town in Italy from north to south, ordering the same dish of simple pasta with tomato sauce, and they would all taste differently.
Napolitans boast that they make it better, using fresh S. Marzano tomatoes,only when they're around of course, in the Summer.
 
The first tomato sauce I made when I started cooking had so many ingredients (including rosemary!). I've calmed down a bit since then.

Every Italian or Italian-American has their own recipe and it has to be the right one because their grandmother brought it from the old country. (I do the same thing for Armenian recipes).

I make a pot of basic meatless sauce and freeze meal-sized portions for later use. I don't bother with San Marzano tomatoes. I think it's become a scam. Besides canned tomatoes, I add tomato paste, onion, garlic, basil, salt and pepper, mushrooms if I have them and a bit of soy or fish sauce to further enhance umami. I NEVER add sugar.
 
Asking how many tomato sauces there are is like asking how many tomatoes there are - can anyone answer that???

One of the types of "sauces" I make countless times every summer is the "raw tomato sauce", which is simply diced up tomatoes, seasoned in countless ways - always some garlic, basil, and EVOO, with a generous grind of black pepper - then the hot pasta is stirred into it, just slightly cooking the ingredients, and served warm, as well as cold, for the leftovers. I often use half pasta and half legumes, to mix with the raw tomatoes.

Most cooked sauces I make with fresh tomatoes are fairly quickly cooked, and almost always with one or more fresh herbs, some added early, with the garlic (which is always in it, right? :LOL:) And besides the traditional types of sauces, using fresh or canned tomatoes, when something just needs 8 or 16 oz of tomatoes, I often just soak an equivalent amount of dried tomatoes (1 lb reduces to about 1 oz almost every time), and blend them to a sauce, and use that. I use these a lot in Indian curries, calling for these smaller amounts of tomatoes.
 
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