If you make your pasta sauce from scratch, please share your recipe.
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Anonymous
| Actual Italian here currently living in the US. Obviously there are a million ways to make tomato sauce for pasta but I would say the main difference between how we make it in Italy and US style is that in Italy we never put spices/dried herbs/dried garlic etc. always use fresh basil, oregano, garlic, onion etc. I agree with previous posters that imported high quality canned San Marzano tomatoes are very important and especially make sure they don’t have a sweet after taste. For an Italian sweet tomato sauce is inedible. I typically make my sauce with (1) canned tomato, fresh basil and garlic; or (2) canned tomato, fresh basil and onion, or (3) finely diced carrot, celery and onion and canned tomatoes and ground beef/pork (simple bolognese). Very few ingredients and all fresh/highest quality. Also make sure not to put parmigiano on pasta that is garlic-based. |
Anonymous
Where do you get the last rule? I have been to Italy many times and they do this all the time. Anyway, over my dead body. Except Romano is better. |
Anonymous
That’s an Ital-American NJ thing. Not an Italy thing. |
Anonymous
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https://www.marthastewart.com/336523/easiest-spaghetti-and-meatballs
This is a great recipe, I usually double it and use the leftover meatballs for sandwiches. |
Anonymous
Italians are generally squishy about adding too much garlic, mixing garlic with onions, overpowering garlic with cheese, etc. Cheese is never added to seafood. In the North, they do things like boil a whole onion or cloves of garlic and then fish them out of the sauce. Garlic was one of those spices considered low class by the Romans - so the further North you go, it is used more sparingly. That said, pesto genovese has garlic and parmesan in it - but you don't typically add cheese on top of the pesto. |
Anonymous
No olive oil? Lol about parm… no parm on seafood either |
Anonymous
| My grandmother would kill me! |
Anonymous
Sorry, that’s a stupid rule and I am breaking it. |
Anonymous
This is idiocy. |
Anonymous
Ironically, actual Italians have been ripping off recipes from Italian Americans for generations now. Here's an interesting read on the origins of Italian classics https://www.ft.com/content/6ac009d5-dbfd-4a86-839e-28bb44b2b64c |
Anonymous
| I’m surprised no one mentioned using Passata. It’s pretty easy to find now and makes great, quick sauces. |
Anonymous
+ 1. |
Anonymous
This thread keeps popping up to the top of the DCUM food section. It is making me really really really want to eat some spaghetti. 
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Anonymous
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Quit trying so hard to be authentic- I was just in Florence and found the food bland with very few interesting vegetable preparations. I am Italian- -American with grandparents from the poor Southern regions ( as most Italians probably are in the US- why immigrate if you have money?) and I like my food spicy and well-seasoned. I say grate good imported Reggiano- Parmigiano on everything. I also frequently put white sugar in my sauce( depending on tomatoes) and it doesn’t taste like ketchup and I am not ashamed. Put fresh basil at the end in your sauce. |
Anonymous
In my family, "gravy" means you cook meat in it - usually pork sausage, meatballs, and/or braciole. "Sauce" would mean a quicker tomato only sauce. For gravy, the key is cooking the meat in the pan first, removing it, using the drippings to cook the onions, add the tomato, then add the meat back in mid-afternoon. For sauce, the family secret is to always caramelize your tomato paste. For a quick sauce it would usually be no onions or carrot or anything, just heat a big glug of oil up, add tomato paste and crushed pepper flakes and stir around until the paste is brick red, then add your tomatoes (we always used canned, I don't have any family members that bother using fresh for a cooked sauce) and cook for as long as you have. |