Most People Are Making Tomato Sauce Wrong! Try These Italian Tricks for Perfect Sauce Every Time

Most people were taught to cook tomato sauce all afternoon. That rule is backwards, and it is the reason your sauce comes out thin, brown, or sour. Nonna Filomena walks through seven tricks from a southern Italian kitchen, and every one of them is free. The seven tricks: Stop cooking it for hours. A plain tomato sauce is done in half an hour. The all-day pot is a ragù with meat in it. Buy whole peeled tomatoes, never diced or crushed. Crush them yourself in a bowl. Onion or garlic, not both. Onion goes soft and clear, garlic goes pale gold and no further. Be generous with the oil. No sugar. Use a whole carrot in the pot, lifted out at the end, or a small piece of butter at the finish. Wide pan, low flame, lid ajar. The sauce is done when the oil separates and rises orange to the edges. One herb, added last. Basil, torn by hand, off the heat. No dried oregano in a plain sauce. Never the blender. Crush by hand, or use a food mill. Make one pot this week and change only two things: whole tomatoes crushed in your hands, and half an hour on a low flame. Then tell me in the comments whether it tasted different, and whether you were taught the all-day rule too.