This is the tomato sauce recipe that changed everything for me. So simple, but mind blowingly good. When I first made it, I couldn’t get my head around how it could be so good with just these few ingredients.
Marcella Hazan is the chef that taught me how to cook authentic Italian. She was tough and demanded authentic ingredients and no shortcuts, but the recipes are timeless and still work today as well as they did 30 years ago. If you’re going to own just one cookbook on Italian cooking, you can’t go wrong with her classic, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.”
Over the years I’ve only made one real change—scaling the recipe up so I could make a larger batch. The ingredients themselves are exactly the same.”
So here it is, just as she intended. Although I never got to meet her, she was always in my ear, whenever I cooked an Italian dish. Her strict fundamentals and unbending philosophy changed my cooking immensely.
Here’s a couple of her other famous recipes, Cannellini Beans alla Marcella Hazan
And a wonderful pesto recipe, Authentic Pesto Recipe Inspired by Marcella Hazan
Looking to stock your Italian pantry, Stocking Your Italian Pantry: Essential Ingredients for Authentic Italian Cooking
If you’re looking for meat sauce, Classic Ragu Bolognese Sauce Recipe: Slow and Delicious
And the famous Sunday Sauce, Authentic Sunday Sauce: A Step by Step To Create A Family Tradition
Or a simple straight forward marinara, Sicilian Marinara Sauce-Workhorse of Nonna’s Kitchen
And of course my favorites, My Favorite Recipes
If you want to Cook Marcella’s exact recipe:
Just reduce the tomatoes to 2 cups and butter to 5 tablespoons. Everything else is exactly the same.
Ingredients:
4 cups canned Italian plum Tomatoes, cut up, with their juice. You can also substitute fresh if you’ve got good plum tomatoes, but they should be blanched and peeled.
1 medium Onion, peeled and cut in half
6 tablespoons Butter
Salt
1 lb Pasta, spaghetti, penne, or rigatoni.
Freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Preparation:
Put the tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, onion, and salt, and cook uncovered at a gentle simmer for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats free from the tomato.
Stir from time to time, mashing any large piece of tomato in the pan with the back of your spoon. Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before serving.
Toss with Parmesan cheese and serve.
Note: As it’s such a rich sauce, it’s better if you don’t overload the pasta and then you get the wonderful flavor of the sauce, pasta and the cheese. It’s perfectly balanced.
This article is part of The Pasadena Chef Cooking School. Explore more cooking lessons, techniques, and ingredient guides here. The Pasadena Chef Cooking School
Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Put the tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, onion, and salt, and cook uncovered at a gentle simmer for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats free from the tomato.
- Stir from time to time, mashing any large piece of tomato in the pan with the back of your spoon. Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before serving.
- Toss with Parmesan cheese and serve.