Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce
Here’s the recipe for a pasta sauce I made one night. I didn’t use it right away. Instead, I split it into two quart-sized Ziploc bags and stuck it in the freezer. Tasted yummy, though, and since I like making my own pasta sauce instead of buying it in jars, I’ll definitely make this again. I saw this recipe one night on Emeril Live (BAM!) and looked it up on the Food Network site.
Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce
From Emeril Lagasse, Food Network
1 large onion, chopped
3 T olive oil
1 T minced garlic
1/4 c. tomato paste
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp hot sauce
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp italian seasoning
1/4 tsp dried basil
2 (28 oz) cans whole italian tomatoes, with juices
3 whole heads roasted garlic, cloves removed from peels
In a large saucepan saute onion in oil over med-high head until lightly golden, about 5-7 min. Add minced garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 min. Add tomato paste, salt, balsamic vinegar, hot sauce, crushed red pepper, italian seasoning, and basil, and cook for 1 min. Add tomatoes, crushing with your hands as you place them in the pot, and their juices. Stir to combine well and bring to boil. Reduce heat to slow simmer and cook for 20 min. stirring occasionally.
Add roasted garlic cloves and stir to combine. Continue to simmer for 30-45 min. longer or until flavors have come together.
Serve over pasta or use as pizza sauce. Makes 1 1/2 quarts of sauce.
Nat’s Notes:
1. I didn’t have hot sauce, so I left it out.
2. If you don’t have balsamic vinegar, I think regular would work fine, too.
3. Roasting garlic takes about 45 min, but can be done several days in advance. For instructions, click here.
4. If you don’t like it too chunky, run it through your blender (even better, an immersion blender) for a few pulses after it finishes simmering. That’s what I did in the picture above.
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Sarah — November 14, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
Yum, Thanks. I missed this one somehow. Good thing you have a side bar. I’m going to make this tonight for my lasagna.
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Michele — March 2, 2011 @ 2:15 am
Oh yum! I think I want to make this soon!
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Janis — April 14, 2012 @ 3:46 pm
Just wanted to let you know I’ve made this a few times. I think it’s an excellent recipe! Thanks for sharing.
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Brooke — November 8, 2012 @ 8:42 am
I just started reading your website, so please correct me if I’m confused. You talk a lot about not using processed foods because of the extra ingredients used for preservation, coloring, and flavor. So homemade pasta sauce sounds like a great way to get away from the jars of sauce you buy at the store. But if your main ingredients are CANS of tomatoes and tomato paste, you’re still consuming all the preservatives. Canned foods have the highest content of preservation chemicals compared to frozen or fresh produce. Why not just cook with fresh tomatoes from a farmers market?
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Natalie Perry replied: — November 8th, 2012 @ 10:31 pm
Hi Brooke!
Thanks for bringing that up. I’ve never heard of canned foods having loads of preservatives, and if you have a source for that claim, I’d love to see it. Logically, they wouldn’t need them because the canning process itself is designed to preserve them. I’ve only noticed citric acid and abscorbic acid (Vitamin C) which are both harmless and are probably there to keep the colors of the vegetables bright. Were you perhaps referring to the BPA from the seals they use on the cans leaching into the food? That’s certainly a problem, and tomatoes are one of the worst for that because their high acid content accelerates the leaching.
Yes, I do promote using fresh, rather than processed food, and I agree with you about fresh and frozen foods being far superior to canned, nutritionally speaking. However, if a person is choosing between typical store-bought sauce (which also contains loads of sodium, sugar, garbage oils, flavorings, etc.) or homemade sauce made with canned tomatoes, I’d choose the cans. I do use canned tomatoes on occasion because I can’t just run out to the farmers market any time of the year. I live in Northern Nevada where we only eat garden-fresh tomatoes about 1/3 of the year. This year I’ve managed to can some, but I doubt it will last until next season. If only we all lived in California. :)
Another point I wanted to make was that recipes are simply guidelines. If a recipe calls for “canned” something, you may be able to substitute fresh instead, or even home-canned foods. This recipe was one of the very first on my blog, back in 2008, when we were just barely starting to transition to a more whole-food diet. I have weeded some recipes out, and it would be nice if I could go back and revise older recipes to reflect our current stance on food, but I simply do not have the time. Right now I’m relying on individual interpretation of recipes, realizing that people who are transitioning to a whole-food diet are in different places along that path. For one person, using canned tomatoes might be an abomination, but to another, it may be the first time they’ve cooked something from scratch!