Marinara Sauce

Submitted by Julie in TX

"My mother got this recipe from an Italian friend that she worked with in California during WWII. It's one of those recipes that can be put on the back burner to simmer and doesn't require a lot of fussing over. She would put a pot of this on the stove to cook and then start her weekly bread baking. The smells wafting out her kitchen window would draw the neighborhood kids to our house so she usually had quite a few extra mouths to feed. Recipe can easily be cut in half."

 

• Ready In: 5hrs 10mins
• Ingredients: 10
• Serves: 8

ingredients

• 2365.9 ml whole canned tomatoes
• 4 (680.38 g) can tomato paste
• 4 bay leaves
• 9.85 ml salt
• 29.58 ml dried parsley
• 9.85 ml dried oregano
• 29.58 ml dried basil
• 4-6 garlic cloves (to taste)
• 2.46 ml chrushed red pepper
• 9.85-19.71 ml sugar

directions

1. Put tomatoes with their juice in large heavy kettle. Use a potato masher to break up.
2. Add tomato paste.
3. Rinse out tomato paste cans with water and add that water to the pot.
4. Add bay leaves, parsley, oregano, basil, garlic, red pepper & sugar.
5. Bring to a boil and immediately reduce heat so sauce will simmer gently.
6. Simmer for 3-5 hours, stirring occasionally. The longer this sauce cooks, the better it tastes.
7. Add a small amount of boiling water if sauce seems to be too thick. We like our sauce fairly thick.
8. You may add browned ground beef when the sauce is ready or your favorite meatball.
9. Serve over your favorite cooked pasta.
10. It's also a wonderful sauce for lasagne.

Reviews

[Diane S.]

Wow. I had to make marinara for around 30 people for a fund-raiser for church. Decided on this one because I could scale it up. It was delicious. I put in more garlic and red pepper than it called for. I had one pot of regular marinara, and fried up some Italian sausage, and added it to the other pot. Lots of people enjoyed it. I had been using crushed tomatoes previously, going to stick with this recipe from now on.