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Batch Cooking Recipe – Pasta Sauce / Marinara Sauce

Every supermarket has a plethora of different types of pasta sauce, ready made, in neat little jars, and these jars of sauce are fantastic for convenience but some, not all, but some, are packed full of salt and sugar. Some of them taste good but nothing compared to homemade sauce.

We do a lot of batch cooking in our house and we usually make our pasta sauce in 12L batches at any one time. This then gets portioned out into bags and popped in the freezer. If we want a quick meal we can just grab a back of frozen sauce, take it out of the bag, no need to defrost (although you can if you wish) and cook down in the pan straight away. Now that is my kind of fast food!

Below is my recipe for a smallish batch of pasta sauce, this makes about 6L of pasta sauce and of course, please do adjust the seasonings to your own taste. I use tinned tomatoes as the flavour is more concentrated and stops the need for tomato puree being added. You will also see there is no salt in my recipe. The saltiness comes from the olive oil and the Worcestershire sauce.

OK on with the recipe!

Ingredients

  • 6.6kg of tinned tomatoes (chopped or whole, either is fine)
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 5 heaped tablespoons of minced garlic or garlic puree
  • 4 heaped tablespoons of dried Italian mixed herbs
  • 6-8 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce
  • 3 large handfuls of fresh basil (add stalks too not just leaves!)
  • 2 tablespoons of sugar or sweetener (we use stevia and erythritol mix as a sweetener in our house)
  • 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
  • OPTIONAL EXTRAS – You can add sliced mushrooms, small chopped veggies etc to this mix AFTER you have blended the sauce if you want them visible or if you want to hide the veggies, add carrots, celery and a little onion to the sauce when you add the tomatoes and blend them into the sauce, sneaky 😉

Method

  • Add the oil and garlic to the pan and gently heat the garlic through, this sweetens and mellows the flavour.
  • Next add everything else in, except the sugar or sweetener, mix well and bring to the boil.
  • Allow to boil for 2-3 minutes and the turn down to a gentle simmer and once again stir well.
  • Allow to simmer on a low heat for an hour and keep checking on it and stirring.
  • After an hour turn the heat up to a medium heat and add the sugar, allow to slowly bubble away until it has decreased in volume by about a quarter. At this point taste (it will be volcanic in heat, please remember to blow on it before shovelling it in your mouth!) the sauce and adjust what you need to. If you need to decrease the garlic flavour or if it tastes a little too acidic, add a little more sugar or sweetener. If it is not herby enough, add more Italian mixed herbs and/or basil. If it needs more salt or tastes a little bland and not well rounded, add a little more Worcestershire sauce.
  • Once you have adjusted the taste, turn up to a medium heat for another 15 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool.
  • Now it is cool you can blend the sauce to however smooth or chunky you like. Once completely cold, portion into freezer bags and freeze. This will last up to 6 months in the freezer if you use a double zip lock freezer bag so completely air tight.

If you want to turn this into a thicker sauce for a homemade meatball sub sandwich for example or to use as a pizza base sauce, just boil it for longer so it reduces more and becomes thicker.

When you need a bag, take it out either the night before and defrost in the fridge or with this pasta sauce you can cook from frozen too!

Enjoy!

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