Two sauce questions

[larry_stewart]

I came across a few different versions ( or techniques ) of sauces I make for pasta on the internet. I didn't seek them out, they kinda found me. Just curious if any off you guys have ever made these sauces this way.

1) Aglio e olio
- I usually finely chop or crush the garlic, cook it up in olive oil ...
- The technique I saw was the garlic was boiled , then added to olive oil and emulsified to a creamy consistency

2) Basic tomato sauce
- Although I dont usually add carrots, and celery, if/ when I do, I grate it finely, fry it up withy the onions, garlic , then proceed from there.
- The version I saw, they blended up the carrots, celery and onion wit olive oil to a creamy consistency , cooked that up for a good 10 - 15 minutes, then added the tomatoes . Maybe just consistency thing.

Just curious off any of you guys do it this way.

 

[jennyema]

1. I do it your way and don’t understand why you’d boil the garlic (and toss the water?)

2. I do it your way, too… but the alternative is interesting …

 

[Steve Kroll]

I'm not a big pasta eater because it tends to be a lot of empty carbs. But for the most part, I do it the same as you Larry.

For number 2, are they not adding garlic? I don't add carrots or celery if I'm making a tomato based sauce, but garlic is a must.

 

[dcSaute]

having done 'spun my own' for years . . .
recommend a try of the Classico line.

'pride in spun' aside, frankly they taste better . . .
Classico has even supplanted my homespun chunky sauce pizza creation . . .

 

[dragnlaw]

Classico is one of my favourite sauces. With a young family I used the cheapest premade sauces with added things like the meat, onion, etc.
I never could and still can't make a decent spaghetti sauce.

 

[Badjak]

I also don't understand the boiling part of the garlic.
It would make it milder, but then why would you want a garlic pasts if you don't like the taste of garlic?
Just fry over low heat

I can see the basic tomato sauce working
I figure you could blend the tomatoes as well. Maybe the blender wasn't big enough ?

 

[pictonguy]

Boiling or blanching garlic just mellows out the bitterness by breaking down the sulfur compounds responsible for garlic's strong, pungent flavor, resulting in a milder and sweeter taste. I don't personally do that for this dish.

The additional ingredients of carrots and celery added to onion is basically a classic soffritto and is used everywhere in Italy for different dishes like in soups and stews, braised dishes, risotto, stuffing's, etc. and tomato sauces. I personally use soffritto's in lots of dishes but not tomato sauce.

 

[Sweetbun]

I came across a few different versions ( or techniques ) of sauces I make for pasta on the internet. I didn't seek them out, they kinda found me. Just curious if any off you guys have ever made these sauces this way.

1) Aglio e olio
- I usually finely chop or crush the garlic, cook it up in olive oil ...
- The technique I saw was the garlic was boiled , then added to olive oil and emulsified to a creamy consistency

2) Basic tomato sauce
- Although I dont usually add carrots, and celery, if/ when I do, I grate it finely, fry it up withy the onions, garlic , then proceed from there.
- The version I saw, they blended up the carrots, celery and onion wit olive oil to a creamy consistency , cooked that up for a good 10 - 15 minutes, then added the tomatoes . Maybe just consistency thing.

Just curious off any of you guys do it this way.

When it comes to tomato sauce, I usually stick to a basic recipe where I sauté onions and garlic, but the idea of grating in some carrots and celery sounds really great!

 

[larry_stewart]

When I do use carrots and celery, I usually grate them to the smallest size, and caramelize them along with the onions to develop some sweetness, before adding everything else. I dont do it often, cause Im satisfied with a very basic sauce, but sometimes I do like to play around with things. I just never heard/ or thought of pureeing it first ( as opposed to grating). Especially in their raw state. I guess its basically the same thing, just a finer consistency.

 

[dragnlaw]

I accidently bought a bag of frozen vegies thinking they were the basic carrots and peas. When I opened the bag it was double the amount of the other vegies with onion! Wha??? Read the label to see it was a frozen soffritto for sauce. Had never seen before, didn't even know they existed.
Also included celery.