You can find quite a few different types of spaghetti sauce at your local supermarket, but you can also make your own. Check out this simple recipe that uses only your blender and your frying pan. The sauce is a basic tomato sauce with a few spices. You can add sausage, chicken, beef, eggplant and any other protein if you would like, but it is a very good sauce by itself.
Your choice of pasta is also up to you, you may like a different style of pasta than traditional spaghetti noodles. Some diners prefer a corkscrew pasta, it will catch and hold more of the sauce. Purists will go with spaghetti noodles and others will use fettucini. This sauce also works very well with stuffed tortellini or ravioli, it’s a very flexible recipe.
Why use a blender? The blender will do a good job of chopping the tomatoes and blending all of the spices. You can use the pulse setting on your blender to decide how chunky or how smooth you want your sauce to be. It’s much cheaper to buy whole tomatoes over canned and you will always get a fresher taste.
Blender Spaghetti Sauce
Ingredients
1 small yellow onion, chopped
4 cups chopped vine-ripened fresh tomatoes, Roma tomatoes are best
1 teaspoon dried basil leaves (fresh basil can be substituted to taste).
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves (fresh oregano. can be substituted to taste).
1/4 cup tomato paste.
1 tablespoon olive oil.
1 or 2 garlic cloves, minced finely
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar.
1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste).
1/4 teaspoon pepper (or to taste).
Prepared tortellini or spaghetti noodles.
Instructions
Heat a big nonstick saucepan over medium-low heat. Coat generously with nonstick cooking spray. Add the sliced onion and garlic and sauté, stirring occasionally, till lightly browned (about 5 minutes). If you want to add sausage or any other meat to your sauce, brown it thoroughly before cooking the onions. Set pan aside.
Add the tomatoes, basil, oregano, tomato paste, olive oil, sugar, pepper and salt to the blender. Process just till blended (there must still be small swellings from the tomatoes). Pour the tomato mix into the saucepan with the cooked onions and cook over low-heat, exposed, to mix the flavors, about 10 minutes.
Serve with cooked spaghetti or tortellini noodles.
Makes 4 portions.
