This recipe for easy homemade marinara sauce is so amazing and of course easy! There are a few variations you can do to change it up as well like mushroom sauce, meat sauce and oh so yummy roasted garlic sauce, which I include in the recipe. The red pepper flakes gives the sauce a very small amount of spice but not overwhelming at all. I love spicy foods so to me it is not very noticeable. If spice is not your thing you can put less in or even cut it out all together and of course if you love it you can always add more.
In the first photo is the sauce after I used the immersion blender, my kids are not fond of chunky sauce, you can skip that step all together and it will appear similar to the pictures below.
If you make this recipe you will never want to go back to jarred sauce again. And it freezes well too!
- 1 28oz can whole plum tomatoes
- 1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 large onion chopped or 1½ cups
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- ¼ tsp red pepper flakes
- ¼ tsp dried basil
- ¼ tsp italian seasoning
- 1½ tsp salt
- In a large sauce pan heat the olive oil. Add onion and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes until onions become a slight golden color. Then stir in the red pepper flakes, basil, italian seasoning and salt cook about one minute. Pour in the can of crushed tomatoes and then add the whole plum tomatoes one by one crushing them up with you hand before you add them in. (you could also do this in a separate bowl ahead of time) add in the juices from the can as well. Stir this all together and simmer on low for 20 minutes stirring occasionally. If you don't want a chunkier sauce you can blend it with a hand held immersion blender or even blend it up in a upright blender. I find the immersion blender is better because you can do it right in the pot. enjoy!
- Modifications for different sauces
- Notes:
- -mushroom sauce add one package of white sliced mushroom and cook with the onion garlic mixture
- -meat sauce ground up Italian sausage or ground beef, drain and add to the sauce after its complete
- -roasted garlic sauce roast a whole garlic and stir the cloves in when you simmer the sauce
