San Marzano Tomato Sauce Recipe- Easy Marinara Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is San Marzano marinara? ›

Cento San Marzano Marinara Sauce

A quick, simple and nutritious marinara sauce made with Cento Certified San Marzano Tomatoes. This sauce is perfect to serve over your favorite pasta cut and is sure to become a favorite in your house.

Cornstarch: Make a slurry of half water, half cornstarch and whisk until smooth. Cornstarch is a powerful thickener, so start by whisking in no more than 1 tablespoon of the mixture per 2 cups of simmering sauce; stir and simmer for 2 minutes, check the thickness, and repeat with more slurry as needed.

For liquid options, a judicious splash of fish sauce, soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce can add coveted depth. Whether making homemade or doctoring store-bought sauce, readers suggested red wine and rinds from Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, both of which bring umami as well.

Though you could use any tomato, Roma and other paste tomatoes — with meaty texture with little to no seeds — are said to develop the best flavor when cooked down into a delicious sauce.

Rather than having a thin consistency like a traditional marinara, tomato sauce is often thicker and sits on top of your pasta dishes. The flavors of a tomato sauce are simmered together slowly, giving them time to develop. The end result is a red sauce that is traditionally a bit sweeter than a marinara.

It's a specific — and highly-sought — variety of tomato

They are red and their appearance is quite similar to Roma tomatoes, but San Marzano tomatoes are thinner and more pointed than Romas. San Marzano tomatoes also have thicker walls, so they're meatier than Roma tomatoes.

But sometimes it's just too watery. In most cases, the reason is that it hasn't been simmered long enough. You see, fresh tomatoes contain a lot of liquids, which are released during cooking. And if you don't give them time to evaporate, your sauce will be diluted.

First, mix one tablespoon of cornstarch with one tablespoon of water to make a cornstarch slurry. Add the slurry directly to the spaghetti sauce as it's cooking on low heat. Stir continuously until the sauce reaches the desired consistency, and you'll be good to go.

Causes of Watery Spaghetti Sauce

Adding too much pasta water to the spaghetti sauce is often the root cause of a watery sauce. Other causes include excess water from the noodles themselves or inadequately cooking down the sauce.

Leaf states that this can be due to burning the sauce in the pot or simply dealing with a batch of produce that are overly acidic or metallic from canning or cooking. This can also come from under-ripe or low-quality tomatoes, as well as stirring in a hefty amount of tomato paste, per Boss The Kitchen.

Why add baking soda to marinara sauce? ›

Add Some Baking Soda

If your tomato sauce is too acidic and verging on bitter, turn to baking soda, not sugar. Yes, sugar might make the sauce taste better, but good old baking soda is an alkaline that will help balance the excess acid. A little pinch should do the trick.

For any marinara purists, adding a bit of sugar to the sauce may seem sacrilegious. But the truth is, sometimes tomato sauce needs a bit of sugar. Because great sauce relies on a tomato's inherent sweetness, which is released when they're cooked down and concentrated.

In a salad or sandwich, you don't need peeled tomatoes. But, if you're making a fresh tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes, the tomatoes should be peeled, cored, and seeded. The result will be a smoother sauce without any seeds, core, or peel in it. Don't worry, it's an easy and quick process.

Compared to the Roma tomato, San Marzano tomatoes are thinner and more pointed. The flesh is much thicker with fewer seeds, and the taste is stronger, sweeter, and less acidic.

To ensure a uniform, smooth texture. Tomato skins are tough and hard to chew, so removing them before you make sauces – especially canned sauces – is important. Avoid bitter flavor.

What Is a San Marzano Tomato? The tomatoes themselves are longer and skinnier than a regular plum tomato, with a thin skin and thick flesh. The smaller size and dense flesh lead to less of that watery goop in the middle, meaning they have more flavor than other, similar types of tomatoes.

And because “true” San Marzanos (more on that later) are grown in Sarnese-Nocerino, near Mount Vesuvius, the soil is credited with giving the fruit cultivated there a distinctive sweetness, low acidity, and concentrated tomato flavor.

Here's the full list: canned San Marzano plum tomatoes, garlic cloves, quality tomato paste, olive oil, salt & black pepper, and fresh herbs – basil and oregano.

Yes. Simply put, San Marzano tomatoes give the sauce really good and distinctive flavor but other tomatoes still will produce good sauce.