Fresh Tomato Marinara Sauce

Recipe:

Ingredient Notes:

• Tomatoes. The best tomatoes for this sauce are dense, fleshy varieties – like Roma tomatoes. They have less liquid and denser flesh. Be sure to use ripe tomatoes, and never use out-of-season, unripe tomatoes.
• Spicy herbs. In this recipe, I use dried oregano. If you don’t have oregano, you can use other herbs to your taste – basil, thyme, Provence herb mix, etc. You can also add fresh herbs to the sauce, but there is a nuance here: to preserve the flavor, they should be added to the sauce at the very end of the cooking process. And this option is good if you want to use the sauce immediately. If it is to be stored, it is better to use dry herbs.
• Tomato paste. This ingredient can be omitted if the tomatoes are maximally ripe and rich in flavor. But an additional enhancement of the tomato flavor will definitely not be excessive, so I would not remove this ingredient from the list, only if you cannot physically buy it.

Let’s start cooking!

Wash the tomatoes. Make a shallow cross-shaped cut in the skin of each tomato.

Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and leave for one minute.

Remove the skin from each tomato.

Dice the tomatoes, removing the stems first. Finely chop the onion and garlic.

Heat 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until soft and lightly golden, 6-7 minutes.

Add garlic and oregano.

Cook, stirring, for about a minute. Add tomato paste.

Cook, stirring, for a few more minutes, until it is rusty brown and smells sweet.

Add the tomatoes to the pan, season lightly with salt and stir.

Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook for about half an hour, stirring occasionally. During this time, the excess liquid will evaporate from the tomatoes, the tomatoes themselves will soften, and the sauce will thicken.

Remove the sauce from the heat and blend.

I usually blend about half of the mixture and leave the rest as is for a richer texture. You can do the same or puree the sauce completely. Or don’t use a blender at all.

Finally, season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste and stir.

The sauce is ready to serve.

Enjoy your meal!