Every once in a while, you come across a recipe that blows your mind. This is a rare occasion, but it just happened the other week and, no joke, I can’t stop thinking about this recipe for the most humble of foods: a simple tomato sauce. I talk about it at parties. I am pimping it out all over the place to anyone who will listen. And there was just no way I wasn’t also going to talk about it here.
And I’m not alone. Marcella Hazan’s recipe for Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, included in her well-loved Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, is probably one of the most heavily blogged-about recipes up in there (and by “there” I mean “the Internet”), garnering a near-religious zeal for its simplicity and flavour. (It’s praised, for example, here. And here. Also here. Chowhounders love it. The Kitchn loves it. You get the idea). And aside from what it tastes like, which I will get to, the kicker is how easy it is. Can you open a can of tomatoes and cut an onion in half? Can you unwrap a stick of butter? If so, then you can make this sauce.
Making this sauce required an enormous amount of restraint on my part not to try and jazz it up with additional ingredients. But the beauty of this sauce is in its restraint: a can of good tomatoes with their juices, left to simmer with only an onion sitting in there and a healthy dose of butter. At the end you can add cheese, basil, parsley, or black pepper if you like, but do your best to avoid overcomplicating this one: best to just toss everything in the pot, bring to a boil, lower to a simmer and walk away for 45 minutes. When you come back, you’ll have something amazing: a light, velvety, sauce. The butter will have rounded out the acidity of the tomatoes, and you’re left with a subtle hint of onion and a complexity in tomato-ey flavour that doesn’t seem possible considering how little effort you put in. As a bonus, you get to eat the onion after it’s been simmering in the sauce. (I blend half into the sauce, or save it and serve it sliced with sandwiches, in salads, on burgers, etc. Don’t throw it away!)
Needless to say, this sauce is incredibly versatile. It’s a perfect compliment to any pasta, and it would be heavenly with gnocchi or as a pizza sauce. I’ve simmered meatballs in it, I’ve spooned it over a plain omelette with a bit of parsley and shaved pecorino, I’ve eaten it by itself out of the pan. I would probably eat it off the floor. Just make the stupid sauce already.
Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
Adapted from Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
Serves 2 to 4
1 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes, with their juices, crushed with your hands
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
5 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp salt
Pinch of sugar (optional; if the tomatoes aren’t particularly high quality)
1. In a large saucepan, combine tomatoes and butter, them place the onion halves cut side down into the pan. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for 45 minutes.
2. Remove onion. Adjust seasonings, stirring in sugar if necessary. If a smoother sauce is desired, used a hand blender or food mill to blend to desired consistency.
Sara Chan is a Toronto-based entertainment lawyer, food enthusiast, unprofessional home chef and even less professional food photographer. Her favourite food group is pork. Sara’s column appears every other Tuesday here on lawandstyle.ca.