Best sauce for your pasta?

I love any kind of sauce on my pasta. I also really like Italian food so pretty much anything is great with me. Though admittedly it kinda depends on the pasta, because certain sauces I feel like goes with certain pasta better. My typical go-to sauce though is a home-made tomato meat sauce, or a simple olive oil + cheese + pepper + salt.

 

I personally like Ragu sauce. It has a rich taste and full of different herbs. It does not give my pasta a full tomato taste which is great. I also use it in lasagna.

 

I love pesto, a basil or sun dried tomato one are my old favorites. I have just discovered a spinach pesto which is as good. On the tomato side, I like a creamy tomato sauce with onions in it and lots of black pepper. If I don't have much in, I use a tomato puree and add some oil to make a paste and some chilli flakes and it coats the pasta enough to flavor it.

 

Like you, my usual choice of pasta sauce is tomato. However, there are lots of different ways of making this so it doesn't always have to be the same. For example, you can add different herbs, makit creamy with cream or creme fraiche, spice it up with chilli and garlic or meaty by adding chopped chopped bacon. Goat's cheese and spinach make a nice sauce, or you can just drizzle with flavored oil. Try making different cheese sauces by including different cheeses instead of sticking with the same one. Ricotta, sheddar, parmesan, stilton and brie all have different flavors and textures so get experiemtning!

 

My sister makes an amazing mushroom alfredo sauce with lots of garlic. I don't eat pasta often because I'm trying to stay off grains, but if I really feel like breaking my own rules I definitely go for some rice pasta and her alfredo. I used to be big on pesto, too, but I have a hard time finding pesto I really, really like. Butter and herbs are also a go-to favorite.

 

I love any kind of sauce. Making it at home is simple and I like adding in different ingredients. My favorite veggie to add are mushrooms. I also enjoy making pesto...it's so delicious when it's freshly made! Beats the canned stuff any day.

 

I'm not too finicky bat my pasta so I'd say I like them all pretty much equally and it may just depend on my mood that day on what I would prefer to eat. If I had to pick, though, I'd say just a well made red sauce is good enough for me, preferably one that's rich and a little sweet and has a lot of grand beef. White cream sauce is okay too but I get tired of that very easily.

 

We limit the amount of tomato sauce that we use in our house, so I'm always up for trying new ones. Love a good alfredo or vodka sauce. I also really enjoy using pesto and there are a lot of different options with that.

 

There are so many variations you can go with for tomato based sauces, that I often just make those, but once in a while I like a non-tomato based sauce of some sort too for some variety.

For tomato sauces, you can go traditional with just some onions and garlic sauteed in a generous amount of olive oil, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Then add crushed tomatoes, season to taste along with a pinch of sugar to offset the acidity. And throw in any dried or fresh herbs that you like. Or you can take it further with some ground beef, or some roast that's been shredded. Sauteed mushrooms are great too, for a meaty vegetarian sauce. Diced chicken thigh meat along with some mushrooms, and bell peppers is also good (I think in NJ it's known as "Chicken Riggies"). Or believe it or not, some tuna fish is fantastic in tomato sauce as well - toss in some capers too if you got them.

A basic alfredo sauce is dead simple to make. You'll want to time it though to be done right when the pasta is done, because you don't want the sauce to sit around and get cold - it doesn't reheat well. Just heat a bunch of butter in a pan with some heavy cream until it all starts to bubble and the butter is fully melted, then turn off the heat and throw in a generous amount of parmesan cheese and gently stir it in. You don't need to over mix it, the cheese will gradually melt into the sauce on its own. In fact, that's why we shut the heat off (or if you are on an electric stove, take it off the burner), because if it's still cooking over heat and/or you over stir it, the cheese will separate too much. There will always be some separation, aged cheeses like Parmesan just naturally don't melt smoothly, but you want to minimize it as much as possible, and there is a sweet spot where it forms a sauce before becoming grainy and oily.

Compound butters are also great for making sauces. They're just butter that's been blended with fresh herbs, and some aromatics like onion and garlic, then rolled into a log and chilled until you are ready to use them. You can make a simple pan sauce with these, by melting them down then adding a splash of white wine (or dry vermouth), and/or a little lemon juice and some parmesan/romano cheese.

A marsala wine sauce is also easy to make. Slice some mushrooms and toss them in flour. Finely dice some shallot. Saute the shallot and mushrooms in a little olive oil, then when cooked, add your Marsala wine to de-glaze the pan and bring it to a simmer so it starts bubbling and reducing. As it reduces, add some butter towards the end along with fresh herbs, like parsley. Season to taste with salt and pepper. The flour on the mushrooms should be enough to thicken the sauce into a gravy, but keep some flour on hand to sprinkle in if it remains too runny. If you are using cooking Marsala wine (which contains salt) you should only need to season with black pepper.