Description
Slowly roasted tomato sauce. Canned plum tomatoes, roasted for hours in the oven until they become a caramelized sauce.
Adapted From:Â The Frankies Spuntino Kitchen Companion and Cooking Manual
Ingredients
Scale
- ¼ cup olive oil
- 8 peeled garlic cloves
- 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
- 2 (28-ounce) cans whole plum tomatoes with juice (preferably San Marzano tomatoes)
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt (if using imported San Marzano tomatoes)
Instructions
- Lightly sauté the garlic: Set oven to 350°F. Pour olive oil into a medium dutch oven with a heavy lid, add the garlic, and then turn the stovetop to low heat. Heat the oil until the garlic bubblers around the edges and shows a hint of brown. Add the red pepper flakes and Italian seasoning to the hot oil, let them sizzle for ten seconds, then stir in the tomatoes and their juice. (Watch out – the oil will sizzle and spit as you add the tomatoes. Wear an apron.) Increase the heat to medium and bring the tomatoes to a simmer, stirring often and breaking up any whole tomatoes with a wooden spoon. Cover the pot and move it into the oven.
- Bake for 4 hours:Â Bake the tomato sauce in the oven for four hours. Stir the sauce and scrape down the sides of the pot every hour; after two hours, leave the lid slightly ajar so steam can escape. After four hours of total cooking time, the sauce will be dark red and the tomatoes will have broken down. Remove the pot from the oven. Let the sauce cool for a minute, stir in the pepper, and the salt if the tomatoes are imported. Serve and enjoy.
Notes
- This recipe freezes well – double the ingredients, and use a six quart or larger pot.
- To make this recipe even easier, I buy packages of pre-peeled garlic cloves. Watch out that the cloves look dry; if they look wet or soft, they’re starting to go bad.
- What kind of tomatoes? DOP San Marzano tomatoes from Italy are the classic answer – but they’re really expensive. I get great results from 28-ounce cans of American tomatoes - Muir Glen plum tomatoes and Hunts plum tomatoes both worked well for me.
- The other big difference between the American and imported tomatoes was the amount of salt in the can. American canned tomatoes have plenty of salt added to them - I think they assume they will be used straight from the can, with no extra seasoning. Italian DOP tomatoes only have a little salt in them; you need to add more at the end to season them properly. Check the nutrition label to see if you need to add salt. If the "% Daily Value" of sodium is 1% to 2%, you'll need to add salt - I add 1/2 teaspoon of fine sea salt, or to taste. If sodium is 8% (or higher), you don't need to add salt.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 4 hours 15 minutes
- Category: Building Blocks
- Method: Roasting
- Cuisine: Italian