Learn Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipes for Everyday Cooking
Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2009
by Chef Todd Mohr
Web Cooking Classes
Making your own pasta sauce recipe is an easy, healthy and cost-effective way to get dinner done. When you learn some basic procedures, it becomes simple to make a variety of sauces to suit almost any pasta. And since you are controlling the ingredients, you know exactly how this sauce ranks on the healthy scale. A great added bonus to going homemade is that making your own sauce will even save you money over buying the jarred variety. Really - there is no reason making homemade sauces shouldn't become a part of your cooking toolkit - a skill you'll be able to use almost every day. Let's review the procedures of three of the most popular and common sauces you'll encounter when making pasta.
Tomato Sauce is one of the five "Mother Sauces" in French culinary and the starting point for any marinara sauce recipe. There are two parts to this sauce that are made separately with their own procedure and then come together at the end: tomato concasse and a sauce "base". The sauce base can be meat, vegetables, broth, seafood - whatever you will be using to make YOUR marinara sauce recipe. Tomato concasse sounds fancy, but it simply means a mixture of tomatoes coarsely chopped. But - there is a trick to getting this mixutre sans seeds and skins. Here's my quick technique for blanching tomatoes, which is the first step in making tomato sauce:
- Core tomatoes on one end and score an "x" on the other side with a knife. This will be where the skin peels away during boiling.
- Place tomatoes in a pot of boiling water.
- When the skin at the "x" has peeled back, it is time to remove the tomato and shock it in an ice water bath to stop the cooking. This will vary by tomato due to size and ripeness.
- Peel and seed the tomatoes. Peeling should be very easy. If it's not, the tomato didn't stay in the boiling water long enough.
Depending how you'd like your marinara sauce recipe to end up, you can puree the tomato concasse or keep it chunky.
Now, onto the sauce base. For a simple marinara sauce recipe, you will probably keep this vegetarian, adding vegetables if you prefer a chunky sauce or vegetable broth if you prefer a smoother sauce:
- Saute chopped onions and garlic in a hot pan with a small amount of olive oil.
- Add your tomato concasse (or puree). This is also where you'd add any other vegetables, like mushrooms or peppers, to your tomato sauce.
- Add vegetable broth and reduce to almost dry.
- Add tomato paste to thicken and color - heat through.
- Add the seasonings of your choice. Basil and oregano are the common ones, but experiment to find what you like.
You've now got a great homemade pasta sauce recipe that you can make almost any night of the week. My guess is that this process would take you about 30-45 minutes to prepare. During this time, your pasta is cooking and your meal is ready in under an hour!
Make any White Sauce Recipe with One Procedure
When you think of a white sauce recipe, most often what you are imagining has its roots in the French mother sauce, bechamel. Bechamel forms the foundation for every white sauce recipe - including the favorite fetuccine Alfredo or even the classic macaroni and cheese. The key to making this velvety white sauce smooth is knowing how much milk to add. This is something that is best determined with your eyes - not a recipe!
You start by melting butter on the stove and then removing it from the heat. As you add some flour - a little at a time - you will be watching for the mixture to thicken up to the consistency of wall paper paste. When it does, you've got roux and it is time to return to the heat. Your goal here is to cook the proteins out of the flour. You will know this has happened when the majority of the roux has turned from yellow to white. During the process, you will smell a toasty smell as the proteins cook out. Now you can start adding milk. This is the most important step in making this sauce so take your time here. You will continue to add milk - a little at a time - until the sauce stops thickening. So here's the process:
- Add some milk and stir.
- Stop stirring and observe.
- If sauce starts thickening back up over the heat, add more milk.
- Continue steps 1-3 until the sauce doesn't thicken back up (in step 3).
A Buttery Garlic Sauce Recipe in Less then 30 Minutes
A very simple garlic sauce recipe has so many uses, it is practically a standard of cooking. Although quick to prepare, you'll want to avoid some common pitfalls that can get in the way of your success. But by following one simple rule: keep the butter yellow - you'll be dishing up a great meal in no time! Again, we start with a French culinary "mother sauce". This time, it's beurre blanc - a saute of shallot and any liquid mounted with cold butter. Since we will be making a garlic sauce recipe, we will also add garlic - at the same time as the shallot. The true talent to this sauce is to always keep the butter yellow. If the butter turns white during cooking, the butter has separated, breaking the sauce. We avoid this by controlling heat at every stage of the cooking process - and moving slowly. Remember: you can always heat the sauce back up again when you cool it, but you can't fix it once it has actually "broken".
Start by putting the cold butter in a COLD pan and heating it on the stove. Remove the pan from the heat and swirl it around to melt some butter. Return the pan to the heat for a couple of seconds to get the butter hot again. Remove from the heat and swirl around to melt more butter. Repeat until all the butter is melted - but not burned. Saute shallot and garlic. Keep the butter yellow - I can't stress this enough! Once the shallots and garlic become translucent in color, add a cold liquid (white wine, for example) and then some cut cold butter. When you are satisfied with the consistency and flavor of the garlic sauce recipe you've created, add salt and white pepper to taste and serve on your favorite pasta.
With a little practice, you will become very good at whipping up a great pasta sauce recipe every night based on what you have on hand in your house. For everyday cooking, a great sauce paired with pasta makes for a great and complete meal. With these techniques and your creativity, there is no stopping the great cook in you from emerging!
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