If You Want to Reach Enlightenment Learn How to Cook a Perfect Tomato Sauce
I’ll teach you how to do it, based on my real experience
Tomato sauce is fundamental in the Italian kitchen. It is used for many different recipes, to condiment pizza and pasta, and to create other more complex sauces.
It seems so easy to prepare, and from a certain point of view it is. What you don’t expect, though, is the voyage you can start if you want to create a perfect tomato sauce. I tell you this because I’ve been deeply involved in it, and I understand what I’ve been doing, only now, after twenty years of regular practice. Well, I actually started recognizing what the matter was about after only ten years.
Tomato Sauce: Simple Version Number 1
The first version of the preparation includes:
- canned peeled tomatoes
- basil
- garlic
- salt
- extra-virgin oil
Instructions:
You heat the oil, then put the garlic and let it become lightly brown. You add the tomatoes previously cut in small pieces, unless you bought the ones which are already cut. You put salt as you please, and basil. Cook for ten to fifteen minutes, depending on how much liquid there is in the can. The tomato in the can is already cooked.
The sense of taking the time to cook the tomatoes again together with other ingredients is to give flavor to the sauce. So that, theoretically, the more you cook the sauce, the most savoured it will be. Just make sure you won’t burn it, by adding a bit more water and putting the fire on the minimum, if you want to cook it for a longer time.
Simple Version Number 2
You will need any kind of fresh tomato, like:
- red cherry
- san marzano
- perino tomatoes
Instructions:
You will use them cut in pieces instead of the canned tomatoes, and will cook them for roughly two to three minutes. Your oil and garlic should be hot when you add the tomato, of course. Adjust with salt and basil, and your “crudaiola” sauce will be ready even before you cook the pasta.
This is the simplest recipe ever invented of a tomato sauce. Unless you want to prepare a salad pasta, in which case you don’t even need to cook the tomato, but that’s another recipe and another story. That’s too easy for you, my friend.
So, now that you are skilled and surely a maniac in wanting to get to the next level, here you are served. Hopefully you’ve been safe, without any scars, you never burnt your sauce or put your kitchen on fire. Your self-esteem is high and you can meet some other challenges.
That is exactly how I felt, when I had the worst depreciable accusation from my husband, a professional chef at that time.
I had been cooking tomato sauce for ten years, and he said to me I hadn’t learnt anything, and that after all that time I should have been able to cook a “decent” pasta with tomato sauce, at least.
If you ever happened to look at any Masterchef show edition with Italian chefs, or Gordon Ramsey, you can understand how I felt after such a debacle. I thought I would have never ever cooked again for my husband.
Actually, some time went by, and I tried to do my best to improve, even if I thought I was already able to do a good job.
How to Prepare a Natural Tomato Sauce
The recipe is always the same as the above mentioned, except for the use of fresh tomatoes.
Fresh tomatoes are a serious and difficult issue, if you intend to peel them.
Firstly, you have to sign the skin in four. How? Using a knife lightly, you just have to make a subtle incision four times longitudinally. Then take off the stem of the tomato. Now they are ready for boiling.
Fresh tomatoes will give you the chills as soon as you need boiling and peeling them. But don’t worry, you just have to manage three elements, iron, under the form of knife, and then water and fire, which combined make boiled water, and try not to get scars out of it (like I did, unfortunately).
The best trick I can give you is to get the hot tomato out of the pot of boiling water with the help of two kitchen utensils. This action will keep it from falling back into the water, preventing its splashing onto your face or arms!
Why do you need to make this effort if you can easily buy canned tomatoes?
If you thought about asking this question, I’m sorry, you lack the basics. Fresh food is sooo much more tasty and healthy, it’s always to prefer for its nutrients. Fresh tomato is the key to your perfect tomato sauce.
How Many Recipes for Tomato Sauce Exist?
There are many other ways to cook a tomato sauce. But this is not a kitchen book with all recipes.
You can use onion instead of garlic.
You can prepare a sauté with finely chopped carrot, onion, and celery.
You can condiment your tomato sauce with oregano.
There are a lot of alternatives. I showed you the classical ones in detail, and I hope you’ll be interested in learning more. Still, I haven’t told you the fundamental and most important ingredient of all.
How You Recognize The Perfect Tomato Sauce
The most important ingredient of your tomato sauce is the love you use to cook.
If you follow all the steps of a recipe you can certainly have a good result.
If you do it repeatedly, you’ll learn that this is not a guarantee of success every time.
Unless you learn how to focus and give all you have to give to your sauce, you’ll always recognize it’s missing something.
You’ll be able to see the difference with a perfect tomato sauce when you’ll be able to understand where you are when you are cooking, where your attention is, and what you’re doing when you’re cooking.
Your whole being needs to be present. Your sauce will receive what you’re giving and will give it back to you.
Be present. It’s this simple.
Have a nice, perfect tomato sauce. It took me twenty years of cooking to get to it, obviously because I hadn’t any previous talent for cooking! You won’t take so long, if you remind yourself to use all the required ingredients.
