This is Marcella Hazan’s recipe for the simplest, most perfect tomato sauce. She calls it “tomato sauce with onion and butter”, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. No chopping, no browning, no pureeing, all you need is quality ingredients and 45 minutes. The tomatoes in question are of paramount importance to the success of this recipe. Take it from Marcella, it’s got to be San Marzanos:
“look for whole, peeled plum tomatoes of the San Marzano variety imported from Italy. They are the best kind to use and, if possible, settle for no other.”
Marcella’s husband, Victor Hazan, wrote about the origin of what he calls “the most famous tomato sauce in the world”:
“When Marcella, newly married, was leaving Italy to join me in New York, she asked her mother how she made the tomato sauce that accounted for a large share of the joy of her cooking. “So easy – her mother said – sauté a chopped onion in butter, when it becomes colored a deep gold, add tomatoes and cook them down to a sauce.” That was the sauce that launched our married life. It was delicious, but it wasn’t too long, however, before Marcella found a more direct route, a clearest expression of tomato flavor. “Why chop and sauté the onion?” she thought. “I’ll just peel it and put it in the pot with the butter and tomatoes.” And that became the tomato sauce whose sweet purity traveled the world. If Marcella had never published another recipe, if all Marcella had produced was her three-ingredient tomato sauce, she would have needed no other example to demonstrate that the truest flavors are the simplest. “When you are making a dish – she would say to her students – don’t look for something else to put in, but rather for what you could keep out.” Everyone today, chefs, TV cooks, bloggers, is talking about simplicity. Marcella showed how to practice it.”
Ingredients
Time: 45 minutes
YIELD: 500ml / 2 cups
- San Marzano Tomatoes, 1 800g/ 28oz can
- Butter, 5 tbsp / 70g
- Onion, 1 medium, peeled and cut in half
- Fine sea salt, to taste
Preparation
- Empty the can of San Marzano Tomatoes into a large, heavy-bottomed pan. Add the onion, butter, and fine sea salt.
- Cook uncovered at very slow, but steady simmer for 45 minutes, until the fat floats free of the tomatoes. Stir from time to time, mashing any large pieces of tomato in the pan with the back of a wooden spoon.
- Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before using or freezing.
- One 800g San Marzano tomato can makes 2 cups/500ml of sauce, or enough for 500g/1 pound pasta.
