What Made Me Quit Store-Bought Pasta Sauce Forever

I cook a lot at home. While I don’t have a big family to cook for on a daily basis (it’s just me and my husband), I do cook professionally in addition to personally. I might not be trying to optimize meal times for a busy family of four, but I do need to balance our needs with my assignments. The crush of having been in the kitchen all day for work and still having to figure out dinner is real. 

I say this to preface my next statement, which is that I like to make things from scratch when I can. Sometimes that means a big weekend project like making homemade pasta or dinner rolls, but more often it means taking a little extra time that results in a better-quality food item than what I could get at the store (and often costs less, to boot). It’s a win-win. One of the things I’ve been making myself for more years than I can count is as simple as it is customizable: tomato sauce. 

I can’t remember the last time I bought a jar of tomato sauce for my personal cooking. Seriously, I gave it some thought. It’s been years at a minimum, and probably more likely decades. A simple tomato sauce for pasta is one of the easiest things you can make for yourself. It’s simple, fast, cheap, flexible, and you can easily pay it forward to yourself by making a big batch and saving the extras indefinitely for an easy meal whenever you need it. It doesn’t matter how good that jar of store-bought sauce is — it simply can’t compete.

Fancy jars of pasta sauce can cost upwards of $10 for 24 ounces. A 28-ounce can of whole peeled tomatoes, meanwhile, will run you closer to $3 to $5, depending on the brand. The math is undeniable.

Making my own sauce not only means I can customize it however I like, but it also means I know exactly what’s gone into it. I don’t have to worry about preservatives or excess sugars or any extraneous ingredients whatsoever. It can be exactly as simple (or complex) as I want. There are lots of foods that are too time-consuming or complicated to make myself, and I happily source the best store-bought versions I can find, but tomato sauce is just too easy to do myself to justify buying it. I know it doesn’t really get any easier than popping the top off of a jar, but the little bit of extra work is worth it.

Part of the appeal of making tomato sauce yourself is there are so many ways to do it. You don’t have to spend hours at the stove blanching, peeling, and stewing tomatoes to make a good sauce.

• Start with canned tomatoes. Canned tomatoes are perfect for sauce. They were picked at their peak and are less acidic than fresh tomatoes, which makes for great sauce. You can choose to start with whole tomatoes and crush them with your hands, or purée them in a blender or food processor. You can opt for diced for a chunkier sauce, or purée for a smooth one. Add a little salt, pepper, garlic, and herbs and you’re in business. No muss, no fuss.
• Or try fresh tomatoes. There are a few easy ways to make sauce with fresh tomatoes that don’t require tons of time or any blanching to remove the skins. Firstly, choose the right tomatoes. Roma tomatoes have thinner skins than slicing or beefsteak tomatoes, which makes them a better choice for sauce. You can chop them up and cook them down on the stovetop, or, my personal favorite move, roast them in the oven with aromatics for a deeply flavored sauce that takes under an hour. If you prefer to use a thicker-skinned tomato, try grating it on the holes of a box grater. 
• Skip cooking altogether. No-cook sauces are a great way to enjoy the sweet flavor of fresh tomatoes. If tomatoes are currently out of season, you can build a sauce with canned tomatoes or passata that doesn’t need cooking either — just stir in any seasoning and herbs you like.