The Most Basic Tomato Sauce

Whenever I visit a new Italian restaurant, I usually order penne in tomato sauce. It's the most simple dish but the quality of the tomato sauce speaks volumes about the restaurant. This is my version, it's simple, it's quick and it passes The Chubby Chops taste test.

The Final Product

Ingredients

A can of tomatoes

A good slug of olive oil

One chunky clove of garlic, peeled

A pinch of salt

Two pinches of paprika

Two pinches of sugar

About the canned tomatoes and olive oil. For this dish, it is better to avoid ring-pull cans.

In trying to eat healthy, I attempt to minimise the amount of processed carbohydrates in our diet. White sugar, white flour and white rice being three of the worst in my eyes. So the sugar that I use for tomato sauce is raw cane sugar. Apparently, it retains the vitamins and minerals that our bodies need to digest the sugars whereas white sugar doesn't. I've read that refined brown sugar is no better than white sugar as it is basically white sugar coloured with one of the by-products of the refining process.

Equipment

A 15-20 cm diameter saucepan

A garlic press

A handheld food mixer

There's no need for a non-stick pan. I use a thick-bottomed steel pan but that brings its own challenges. A thin-bottomed pan would do.

My hand mixer fits nicely in an open "standard" can.

Method

Heat the pan so that it is warm rather than hot, cover the bottom with a decent layer of olive oil and let the oil warm up.

Crush the garlic into the warm oil and let it very gently simmer so that it softens but does not brown. I find this very tricky with a heavy-bottomed pan and it takes constant attention. Somehow it's easier with thin-bottomed pans as they don't retain so much heat.

Once the garlic has softened, open the can of tomatoes and carefully drain the juice into the pan retaining the tomatoes. Turn up the heat a little.

The juice from the tomatoes simmering in the oil and garlic

Now blend the tomatoes in the can until they are as smooth as you like your sauce. Add them to the pan.

If your blender doesn't fit into the can, you will need to blend the tomatoes in a suitable container. Which will of course add to the washing up. My blender is too large to get into a ring-pull can so I try to avoid them. It's not a problem if I remember before opening a ring-pull can, I simply open it at the bottom with a can opener.

You may be wondering why I blend the tomatoes before cooking rather blend the sauce once it has been cooked. The reason is that I believe the tomato sauce both tastes and looks better this way. If you blend the sauce, your blend all the ingredients not just the tomatoes. This deadens the tastes for me. When you blend the completed sauce, the bright red colour of the tomatoes gets diluted to an orangey-red somewhat akin to the colour of tinned cream of tomato soup. I like my tomato sauce to look the colour of ripe tomatoes.

Add the pinch of salt and a couple of good pinches of both paprika and sugar to the pan. I find paprika adds a touch of smoothness and nicely deepens the colour of the sauce.

A quick stir, bring to the boil, and simmer until the sauce thickens a little.

Variations

Add a splash of olive oil once the sauce is finished and removed from the heat if you like a really rich tasting tomato sauce.