Marinara Sauce

This marinara sauce is delicious, and not too complicated! It does take a while to cook, but you don’t need to babysit it the whole time. You just need to stir it occasionally and check on your stove to make sure you don’t burn down your house. There’s no need to hover. But, don’t go to the grocery store with the stove on or anything.

Making your own sauce will level up any dish that calls for red sauce or marinara sauce. Make better lasagna, better baked ziti, better chicken parmesan, etc. I love to just serve it over spaghetti with homemade meatballs. Oh, I have a recipe for homemade meatballs too: https://www.mapletaffyandlousytomatoes.com/recipes/easy-baked-meatballs/

This is a really good all-purpose sauce recipe. It’s even a good base recipe if you want to make meat sauce. To turn this into meat sauce just brown up a pound of ground beef and add it to the sauce 1/3 of the way through the cooking time. To kick it up another notch replace half of the salt in the recipe with a cube of beef bullion or beef stock concentrate. I like to make the meat sauce version when I make lasagna, or when I’m too lazy to make meatballs.

I am not Italian. I’m not Italian-American. I’m a standard American Caucasian mutt (I am 1/4 Irish though). I don’t think it really matters, but I’m telling you this because if you are Italian-American and you follow MY marinara sauce recipe, it might be a sin. I’m not sure, maybe ask your priest or your Nonna. My point is I’m not sure that this is “authentic” to anything, all I know is that it’s way WAY better than every jarred sauce I’ve eaten (and I’ve eaten a lot of jarred sauce). Except maybe Rao’s jarred sauce, there’s a reason it’s almost 8 bucks a jar.

Print Recipe

Marinara Sauce

Author: Mary Ellis Cooking Method: Stove-Top

Difficulty: Easy Prep Time 10 mins Cook Time 76 mins Total Time 1 hr 26 mins

Servings: 6

Ingredients

Servings

• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp butter (or plant butter alternative)
• 1 large carrot (grated)
• ¹⁄₂ large onion (chopped)
• 10 cloves garlic (minced)
• pinch red pepper flakes (add more if you want it spicy)
• 2 tsp oregano
• ¹⁄₂ tsp ancho chili powder (can sub paprika)
• 1 tsp anchovy paste
• ¹⁄₄ tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 ¹⁄₂ tsp dried basil
• 2 15 oz cans fire roasted diced tomatoes (keep the juice)
• 15 floz can crushed tomatoes or plain tomato sauce
• ¹⁄₄ cup water
• 1 tsp honey
• pinch baking soda

Instructions

1. Add all of your oil and butter to a medium/large pot.
2. Chop your onion and grate a large carrot. Add to the pot and turn the stove on medium.
3. Add the red pepper flakes (just a little pinch unless you want it to be spicy), ancho chili powder, oregano, and basil to the pot. Cook 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. While the vegetables cook mince your garlic.
4. Turn the heat down to low, add the garlic and anchovy paste to the pot. Cook about one minute stirring often.
5. Add all of your canned tomatoes and the rest of your ingredients to the pot.
6. Bring to a simmer, and keep it at a gentle simmer as it cooks. You may need to turn the heat down a little.
7. Cook for 1 hour and 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. At least every 15 minutes.
8. Enjoy!