Do you make your own pasta sauce or buy it at the store? I always make my own. Depending on the type of sauce I want I'll just add a few ingredients to a saucepan and heat that up while I'm making my pasta and it's just as easy as pouring it out of a jar. It's a lot cheaper too. I usually make extra and keep some for another meal. I've frozen it before too so it can be kept for even longer.
I buy it at the store...as much yes I love the taste of fresh pasta made out of real tomatoes, I find it a real hassle to make them at home. I work all day, and last thing I want to do when I get home is to make pasta sauce if I can buy it ready!
I have decided the next time I use pasta sauce, I am going to make it at home. I think it would be something different. I think it could be cheaper and healthier as [email protected] you have a standard recipe you use? I went to Costco around Christmas time and got 3 huge jars of Pasta sauce for a song, and am still using some of that, but when it is gone, I plan to make my own. It would be an interesting way to use tomatoes.
I used to grow roma tomatoes in my garden so every fall I would cook down my tomatoes and make sauce and freeze it. It was so fresh and delicious. My kids can tell the difference between homemade sauce and store bought. Now I don't have a vegetable garden so I buy canned or jarred sauce. Usually I get whatever is on sale or I'll just buy crushed tomatoes or tomoto puree and add my own spices, onions, garlic and veggies to make sauce. I was thinking that this fall I may buy a large crate of tomoatoes and make my sauce again.
I have plenty of spices...indeed, my spice cupboard runneth over, so finding sauces to add to the canned tomatoes would be no biggie whatsoever. I haven't even made spaghetti for awhile, because I haven't had any meat to put in it, although I like the Primavera pasta sometimes too. It is filling, and is good when you put the sauce over the veggies wtih the spaghetti. I am sure it is healthier than using a meat base too. Sometimes the soy crumbles are good as an alternative to meat as well.
I buy mine because we don't have any family recipes for easy pasta sauce, but there is a lot of ways to prepare it differently. My favorite ingredients to add are are brown sugar, some water the pasta cooked in, or mushroom slices.
We always make our own pasta sauce for 2 reasons - 1) the taste, we are particular with our desired taste, 2) canned pasta sauce is very expensive. And to consider that pasta sauce in the supermarket is processed food, we always prefer fresh. It's easy to whip up the sauce anyway. All we do is saute the ground beef in garlic and onion plus soy sauce, cook until the meat turns brown before adding the tomato sauce and add salt if necessary. That's almost done except if you want to add hot dog strips and diced spam. Done.
We just buy whatever suits our fancy. I personally prefer white spaghetti sauce or Campbell's but since those ingredients are rather expensive, we do not buy them as often as we buy meatballs and Italian style spaghetti sauce. It's not that we can't make our own pasta sauce but maybe because we're pressed for time or no one really knows where to begin with the sauce-making process that hardly anyone makes their own pasta sauce at home.
When I was younger say about a decade ago I made my own pasta sauce starting with frying my hamburger than adding the veggies than my 2 cans of tomato sauce with seasoning from a package...I loved Schilling package mixes that one day disappeared...now there's McCormick or Lawrys...they're okay, but Schilling was better tasting spaghetti mixes.
I often make the pasta sauce myself by using plain tomato sauce with some salt and pepper. Sometimes I put onions and tuna it it to add some more flavor to it. I agree it is definitely cheaper than to buy them in a jar!
I make my own sauces! I have a ton of them, you have no idea. You don't even have to cook them, you can just keep fresh ingredients around and you'll always have a bunch of stuff on tap
I've always made my own - as apart from pasta toppings/sauces being real simple, quick and extremely inexpensive to make - it allows for a greater amount of variety and avoids the possibility of meals getting too repetitive - particularly as there are literally hundreds and hundreds of different sauces, toppings or accompaniments for pasta - other than the popular tomato based English/American versions that come in a jar.
If I'm making a tomato one, as I grow my own tomatoes anyway I usually use fresh tomatoes. I've made it with canned tomatoes when I didn't have any fresh ones to hand though and it was still good. I usually add the tomatoes to a pan with garlic, onion, basil (sometimes other herbs too - I especially like oregano) and sometimes I'll add some chili or red bell peppers as well, it just depends what (or who! Kids don't like it as spicy!) I'm making it for or what else I'm adding to it. I've even added grated zucchini before for a slightly lumpier texture (and I found that works well on pizza too!).
