I realize that everyone on the internet has already posted about this sauce, which is originally Marcella Hazan’s. But I’d never encountered it until a year ago, when we were spending a long weekend in Santa Barbara with 3 other families, including 5 other kids. Megana tossed a couple of things in a pot to make a quick marinara for her kids, and I didn’t think to taste it until the next day when we were using it as the base for a pizza sauce.
This sauce is dead simple, and dead delicious. It’s also not the pasta sauce I grew up with — that is Craig Claiborne’s from the 1961 The New York Times Cookbook, on which I am very guiltily cheating in my current dalliance with Marcella. Mom & Craig, I’m sorry. (Or maybe #sorrynotsorry…)
It’s the butter in this one that makes it, of course. (I bet you could make Claiborne’s recipe even more delicious if you added a stick of butter, but that’s experimentation for another day.) Another major attractor of this recipe is that it’s entirely unattended: you just crack open a few cans of tomatoes, peel some garlic and barely peel an onion, throw in the butter and a few dashes of salt and sugar (to counteract the acidity, says Megana; I haven’t tried it without), and then simmer for an hour while you play with the toddler (or whatever people without kids do while their dinner cooks). An hour later, immersion-blender it up, and voilà, sauce for two dinners’ worth.
PrintButter-Tomato Sauce
Only slightly tweaked from Marcella Hazan’s original, this buttery tomato sauce is a surefire winner between simplicity and deliciousness.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 1 hour
- Total Time: 1h5m
- Yield: 2 dinners 1x
- Category: Dinner
Ingredients
- 2 28-oz. cans whole San Marzano tomatoes
- 1 stick butter
- 1 large yellow onion, washed, peeled, and cut in half lengthwise to keep it held together by a small amount of root portion
- 5–6 small (or 2–3 large) cloves garlic, peeled
- 2 t salt
- 1 t sugar
Instructions
- Put it all in a pot. Bring to a simmer, and simmer for an hour, uncovered.
- Remove the onion. (If some onion remains in there, no big deal — extra flavor!)
- Using an immersion blender, blend until smooth.
Notes
This makes two dinners for our family of two adults and 1 toddler. I use one immediately, and freeze a pint jar of the second.
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