What will Make a Good Tomato Sauce?

Ripe tomatoes. Depending on the season, it might be very hard to find, therefore it will sometimes be necessary to add canned tomato paste to pale tomatoes or even use canned tomatoes and it is all right as long as you use good quality ones.

Indeed, even Italians, it is no secret, like and use tomatoes a lot, do not hesitate to use canned tomatoes when it is off season. You could even make your sauces with fresh, bright red tomatoes and preserve them by canning and use when it is hard to find good looking and mainly tasty tomatoes.

What will make the difference between a tomato sauce or other sauces is the duration of cooking time.  A short cooking time? You will make a Coulis. A long cooking time and you will get a dark, full-bodied flavored sauce.

Tomatoes have a rich flavor, low liquid content, very soft flesh which breaks down easily and the right composition to thicken up into a sauce when they are cooked, without the need of thickeners like Roux. All of these qualities make them ideal for simple and appealing sauces.

The simplest tomato sauces consist just of chopped tomato flesh, with the skins and seeds optionally removed, cooked in a little olive oil and simmered until it loses its raw flavor and seasoned with salt.

Water or another, more flavorful liquid such as stock or wine is often added to keep it from drying out too much. Onion and garlic are almost always sweated or sautéed at the beginning before the tomato is added. Other seasonings typically include basil, oregano, parsley and possibly some spicy red pepper or black pepper. Ground or chopped meat is also common.

Tomato sauces come in two types:

• Cooked
• Uncooked

Storage information:

• Uncooked sauce: Serve immediately (best) no later than 8 hours. Keep it in the refrigerator
• Cooked sauce: Refrigerate for 3 days. You can also freeze it for 2 months