Stir In The Burn: The Easiest, Umami-est Pasta Sauce You’ll Ever Make

Our family didn’t have an alarm clock on the weekends. Saturdays I would wake up to full volume REO Speedwagon, Styx Greatest Hits or, the cruelest of them all, Meatloaf Paradise by the Dashboard Light. On Meatloaf mornings, I was the one “praying for the end of time”. Classic rock days, the brothers and I knew we’d be cleaning out the garage, power washing the carpets, mopping the floors on our hands and knees, or some other Cinderella-type schadenfreude our parents would inflict on us. 

Sundays were a different wake up call. She swears she never did it on purpose, but to wake me up, my mom took the pans out of the cabinet and clanged and banged them like her own personal drum solo. Eventually I smartened up, and on Saturday nights, I took out all the pots and pans so she didn’t have to. And yet… 

She woke me up to cook the pasta sauce. It was gigantic. When I started to cook in restaurants I was laughed at because of that sauce. The stock pot every restaurant has, you know the one, the giant 40-gallon pot that simmers a witch’s cauldron of chicken bones, carrot peels, onion scraps, etc. I called it, in my shamelessly thick Chicago accent, “the past-a sauce pot”. Past-uh. Past-uh sauce. All of a sudden, in that kitchen, every word with an ‘a’ in it was spoken with a sharp and nasally Chicago ‘ayunh’.

Growing up, this sauce became the basis of a dozen different dishes. Today I’m going to teach you the sauce, easiest you’ll ever make. And I’ll share the tricks I’ve done to get more flavor out of it. In my next article I’ll teach you all the derivatives we’d make from that sauce. How to make it into tomato paste, pizza sauce, chili, espagnole (what we’d call gravy). I’ll also lay out some ways I use it today, in food the fam never cooked like shakshuka, curry masala, ayalet mujadara, and more. But first, the sauce. Let’s get started. 

Ok so the sauce itself. There are no measurements but I’ll give you the rough amount I use for myself these days. This takes me about ten minutes to prep and it’s set up to be easy and adaptable. It’s not a perfectly-executed Michelin star sauce, but it’s an easy everyday one. I make this sauce a few times a month. Any leftover I put into a Ziploc, very carefully lay it on it’s side so it freezes flat. Then I store them upright like books in my freezer. When I’m too lazy to cook, I’ll cut open the bag with scissors and throw it in a saucepot. Don’t defrost it. The liquids will leech out of the bag and make a mess in your fridge. Keep cooking easy. Life is hard enough. Ready for the sauce? Here we go. 

This will be in recipe format below.

Two onions – One cut brunoise, for later, and one fine brunoise. Basically, one cut as small as you can and cut one with each piece the size of your fingernail. The onion cut really small, this goes in the pot first with some olive oil. Or butter. Vegetable oil. Bacon fat. Whatever you like. Medium-low heat. Don’t burn the edges of the pieces and use more olive oil than you think. They should be floating just above the bottom of the pan. 

Four to six cloves of garlic – Yes you can use the preminced in the jar and I know it’s not a popular opinion. Jar garlic is more bitter, sure, but that bitterness is more in the oil than the garlic. The oil extracts bitter flavonoids which mix with the air. If you want to use preminced, scoop the amount of garlic into small hand strainer, drain the oil then cook with the garlic itself. For even less oil, leave the garlic in the strainer and run it under some warm water. For cloves, smash ‘em, peel ‘em, chop ‘em into chunks. Each about the size of a peanut. Don’t bother to mince. Keep it simple.  

Two 28oz cans of tomatoes – Crushed, diced, whole, whatever you got. Open them up and stack the bruinoise onions into it. You’ll be adding in two flights of onion. The small ones first, at the beginning, simmered in olive oil. Later, the raw ones go in with the tomatoes and spices. Also, open up an 8oz can of tomato paste and take out one 16oz cans of tomatoes. That last can of tomatoes is the secret of this sauce. 

Spices, etc – In the other can, stack the following on top of the tomatoes: Italian seasoning, salt, black pepper, a few pinches of white sugar, a shake or two of crushed red pepper, a glug of any vinegar you got, and a bay leaf or two (don’t use pieces, try to use the biggest ones you have). 

Ok I know I threatened to withhold the measurements. Out of respect to my grandmother’s passionate, almost belligerent, refusal to measure. But here’s some quick, rough ratios. Please don’t tell her. Half as much sugar as Italian seasoning, let’s say one tablespoon of sugar and two tablespoons of Italian seasoning. Equal amounts of salt and pepper. Let’s say two teaspoons at most. Crushed red pepper to taste, it adds a depth and richness if added early but a sharp spiciness if you add it near the end. I use an equal amount as the salt and pepper. You can leave it out all together but I wouldn’t. Same with vinegar. Two tablespoons-ish. I wouldn’t recommend balsamic but it works. My grandpa would skip vinegar and crushed red pepper but shake in some Tabasco for that side of the flavor spectrum. But you don’t need vinegar or CRP. You do you.

Sugar. Controversial yes. “My gran-mutha neva, eva, eva, eva put sugah in hur sawce.” Yeah yeah cousin Gino, I’ve heard it all before. And we have the same grandmother. Why do you talk like that? Here’s what grandma had that we don’t these days, properly grown tomatoes. Ever pick up a tomato at the store and it’s hard as a baseball? Yeah. It’s a crime against food. If you threw those tomatoes at a window which would break? It should be the tomato. But we all know that tomato would make a hole in your window the same way it makes a hole in my soul. If you’re in your car and you ran over a store-bought tomato it’d stay perfectly intact and probably ruin your alignment. So sugar it up. There isn’t sugar in our tomatoes because they’re grown to be shipped or packaged, not eaten. Those plant sugars develop on the vine. Eat one like an apple. It’s like you bit into ball of grass-flavored wet sand. Ok. Tomato rant over. Cool family trick for those of you that grow your own. Tomato stem cream sauce. Oh, and brown sugar in your sauce adds a mellow sweetness where as white sugar is brighter. Your choice.

The process – First, open a bottle of wine. Pour a large glass and drink a sip. Say, “It needs more time to open up,” and down the glass. Immediately pour another and drink it at a socially acceptable pace. 

Next, heat an oven-safe pot and fire up the oven to 350°F/175°C. Olive oil in the pot, more than you think. Add the fine brunoise onion. Let it simmer over medium-low heat while you assemble the rest. Stir here and there. When your mise-en-place is all mised-en-place add the garlic. When the garlic smells garlicky add a splash of the wine. Simmer this gently until the small bubbles slow down and it just barely start to thicken up. 

Alcohol vaporizes at 173°F then it will disappear. It disappears at room temperature in my family. But that’s not a chemical issue, it’s a chemical dependence issue. You don’t want to go above alcohol evaporation point, small bubbles, because between 173°F and 212°F, when water boils off, you are boiling away delicate flavor compounds in the wine. If you boil past water’s big bubbles, congratulations, you’ve created a gooey, funky-flavored paste of tannins. It’s ok though as long as it didn’t burn. Add more wine to the pot, mix it all together and boil out the alcohol again. 

Ok. So you’ve got onions, garlic, and wine bubbling away, small-ly. Next comes the easiest part. Remember your cans of tomatoes with all the ingredients stacked on top? Dump those both in the pot. Then mix in the small 8oz can of tomato paste. Now stir it up, Bob Marley. Let it come to a gentle simmer on the stove. But what about the oven? Put the whole pot in there. And that’s the sauce. You can use this as early as 30 minutes from now. However.

Do you want to know the secret of secrets? How to develop amazing, rich, deep, umami flavor without adding any more ingredients? Ok it’s really not that special but since I started this technique I’ll never cook a sauce without it. I discovered it by accident. Like Newton discovered gravity. You could say I’m the Isaac Newton of Italian Americans. Here’s what makes my sauce different from my family’s. Burning the sauce. There I said it. Burn it. Just the top. In the oven. 

How? Why? Didn’t this guy just lecture me about the holy sanctity of tomatoes? I’ll explain. I promise. But in the meantime. Let the pot sit in the oven and simmer for about 2 hours. Then when you come back there will be a black crust of Malliard reaction on top. And some black flecks on the side where it bubbled. Take the pot out. Stir in the burn. Scrape the sides with a spoon and mix all that black crusty stuff back in. Then repeat. Add water if it gets pasty. The thicker the sauce is, the quicker the top will brown. Do this until it’s about 30 minutes from the time you want to eat. When it’s that time, add in the 16oz can of tomatoes, stir it up and put it back in the oven. Here’s why it works.

Ever eat a charred tomato? The flavor is unmatched. I’ve grilled raw tomatoes for this sauce and it was amazing but a huge pain to do. So, to mimic a charred tomato flavor I burn the top of the sauce and scrape in the side fond. It creates the depth you want from a pasta sauce and you’ll have to stop yourself from eating it with a spoon. At this point, you could leave it as. If it’s going into something like eggplant parmesan, the eggplant’s bitterness is balanced out by the super-rich sauce. But what really elevates this sauce for pasta is to add in a new can of tomatoes. Mix in that 16oz can and taste it. The fresh, bright, acidity of the new tomatoes creates a sauce you taste in layers, in all parts of the flavor spectrum. If you want less acidic bite, you can put it back in the oven for 30 minutes to cook it out.  

Optionals – Meat. Red. Browned first, set aside, then add with the tomatoes. Butter, at the end, stirred into the sauce and pasta before service. Worcestshire or fish sauce. I don’t but it’ll add umami if you do. But they add distracting, less Italian flavors too. Some people like it. If I have fresh basil or parsley, I throw them in whole then fish them out later with a pair of tongs. No picking herbs, no fine chopping yet you still get all the flavor you want out of the plant. No oregano though. You’ll turn it into pizza sauce. If I’m feeling the effects of the wine at this point, I’ll pull out the saucy whole herbs and put them on a slice of Italian bread with some parmesan. Maybe an anchovy. I call it Broke Bachelor Bruschetta. By the way, I don’t grate parmesan anymore. I use a peeler, like for potatoes. Try it. Oh and if you’re crazy like me you’ll keep your parmesan rinds in the fridge to put in the sauce. Try to use them before someone opens up your fridge, full of onion scraps, chicken bones, parsley stems, and parmesan rinds, and says, “You cook your garbage?” 

There you have it. My version of the family sauce. As easy as can be and it only takes ten minutes to put together. Next article, we’ll expand on this basic sauce to create all sorts of different dishes. Tons of culinary variety from only ten minutes of work. Ok, maybe twenty if you open a second bottle of wine. See you next article. Like REO Speedwagon said, “I believe it’s time for me to fly.”

Ingredients

Olive oil, enough that the onions just barely float, depends on pan shape

Two 28oz cans of tomatoes

One 8oz can of tomato paste

One 16oz can of tomatoes

Two small onions, one cut fine, one cut into small pieces

Four to six garlic cloves, peeled, smashed and cut into peanut-sized pieces

Two tablespoons of Italian seasoning

One tablespoon of sugar

Two teaspoons of salt

Two teaspoons of black pepper

One or two bay leaves

Two teaspoons of crushed red pepper (optional)

Two tablespoons of any white vinegar (optional)

Process: Heat oven to 350°F. On stovetop, simmer olive oil and fine cut onions. Add garlic. Add wine. Add the rest except 16oz can of tomatoes. Bring to simmer. Place pot in oven. Simmer 2 hours. Stir in browned crust and side fond. Repeat if desired. If desired, add 16oz can of tomatoes and simmer in oven to taste.