All you need to learn about how you can make a sauce using fresh tomatoes is a short instruction. From fully ripe tomato to half-ripe tomato. Here I'm referring to red tomato sauce. It might be referred to as gravy. The iconic Italian-American eatery opened a thousand others. While the slow-cooked tomato sauce used at red-checked tablecloth restaurants all along the East Coast (as well as in homes in New Jersey) has Italian roots, it is as American as it comes. This is not a Pomodoro sauce that is light and fresh. It's hardly the kind of sauce you whip together for a quick weekday dinner. It's neither the marinara sauce you heat up from a jar nor the sauce you drizzle gently over perfectly al dente noodles. It's called red sauce. The hearty, rib-sticking Italian-American stew is made to fill you up with flavor and pride in equal measure. It's the kind of sauce that, while you're preparing it, you open the windows to let the rest of the neighborhood know what you're up to. Kids in elementary school defend the honor of this sauce. It's the kind of sauce you want your meatballs to be submerged in, your chicken parmesan to be bathed in, and the kind of sauce you want to spread on top of your pasta rather than just toss it in. "My mum takes five hours to make her sauce." "Yeah? My mother prepares hers for six hours, though." Well, my mother cooks hers for seven hours while crushing the garlic with just her hands. Back when Little Italy restaurants had real reputations to uphold, this was the sauce upon which they built their reputations. Here, we're referring to the all-day sauce. The kind of sauce that takes just a few canned tomatoes, a few aromatics, a little olive oil, and perhaps some basil as a base and alchemically changes it into something so fantastic that families can be centered around it. 
a sauce that, in reality, took a full day to prepare but tastes like it just took a few hours. And if I'm going to spend the entire day making something (or, more significantly, trying to persuade you to do so), it better be worth every minute of my time and then some. I've placed my reputation on the line after several testing, just like those old Little Italy eateries. The second-best red sauce you've ever tried is this. There is no way I can compete with granny in this situation. The best tomatoes for sauce, according to "Mater Matters" The most crucial query is, "Which tomatoes should we use?" Daniel has already demonstrated how to prepare the best tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, so if you're lucky, you can get wonderful tomatoes from a farmer or possibly your backyard throughout the summer. However, if you're like the majority of us, canned tomatoes are your best option. You may find canned tomatoes in many different forms at the grocery store—crushed, diced, in sauce, etc.—but what you want are whole peeled plum tomatoes that have been packed in juice or puree. Although it is possible to acquire a good can of crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes are usually always of higher quality than those used to make crushed or diced tomatoes and allow you to chop them to any desired size. If you have a preferred brand of tomatoes, stick with it: of the widely accessible, American-produced tomatoes, I prefer Muir Glen and Cento. You can never go wrong with D.O.P. San Marzano tomatoes imported from Italy if you can locate them. The D.O.P. seal guarantees that they were cultivated, harvested, and processed by extremely tight guidelines that ensure a particular baseline quality. "D.O.P. doesn't necessarily indicate the best," you can be heard saying. And it's true: If you know where to search, you can find tastier tomatoes. The D.O.P. San Marzanos, however, are widely available and come with a quality guarantee. I enjoy that. 
I experimented with several techniques for puréeing tomatoes. A blender or hand blender can make a comparatively smooth sauce; I prefer my sauce to have larger tomato bits. The food processor produces almost perfect results, but cleanup can be messy. Instead, I decided to get my hands dirty, put the tools away, and work entirely analog here. In addition to producing the best texture for a chunky sauce, pressing tomatoes between your fingers is also incredibly calming. This sauce will cook down to a rough chunky texture that is fine enough to cover a decent meatball or spaghetti while maintaining plenty of substance. Essential for flavor and texture is olive oil. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Oil must first be added to the pot before the tomatoes can be added. In a sauce, oil performs a variety of tasks. It is primarily a medium for flavor transmission. To release tasty components, many of which are fat-soluble, you need to break down the cell structure of aromatics like garlic by sautéing it in oil. Then, these fat-soluble substances disperse throughout the sauce. Additionally, oil is less volatile than, say, water and allows you to cook at higher temperatures. Many chemical processes that give flavor don't take place when water is 212°F from boiling. An edible media that can be heated far higher than this temperature is oil. Finally, fat brings its flavor and texture to the dish. Some people will advise you against using extra-virgin olive oil when cooking because it alters the flavor. Poppycock! It is accurate to say that certain of its flavors will deteriorate. However, a flavorless oil like canola or vegetable has virtually little flavor, to begin with. You calculate. Or you can simply have me do it: Numerous > Some > None. Good olive oil will taste significantly more flavorful in sauces than neutral oil will. Of course, adding the last sprinkle of fresh olive oil is also beneficial. If you heat good olive oil too much, especially when using olive oils with a lot of sediment, it might burn and become caustic. 
However, you never run the risk of the oil smoking while preparing a sauce like this (unless you're doing something seriously incorrect). Texturally, fat gives a sauce a rich, mouth-coating feel, both when it separates from the sauce on its own and when it emulsifies with the liquid phase of the sauce to make the whole thing creamier. Put some butter there as well. Butterfat offers a buttery, fresh flavor to the mixture and emulsifies considerably more easily with liquids. Some tomato sauces that are simmered begin with both onions and garlic. This is how Barbara Lynch, my former cook at No. 9 Park in Boston, produced her prison sauce, just like Vinnie did in the movie Goodfellas (with the garlic even thin enough to read through with a razor blade). No matter how finely you chop it or how slowly you cook it to break it down, I find onion particles in the finished sauce to be distracting, so I omit the onion. On the other hand, plenty of garlic is necessary. Though I opted to slice it with my knife rather than utilizing Vinnie's razor blade method, I still used a full 2 cloves per 28-ounce, or 800-gram, can of tomatoes (that's 8 cloves for the entire pot). I contrasted freshly cut garlic with that which had been shredded on a Microplane and put it through a garlic press. These techniques work well in many applications. However, in this instance, they both generate overly little and wet bits of garlic. It burns quite quickly rather than melting and releasing a fragrant scent. The best method is to chop by hand. It's important to sauté the garlic slowly so that its taste can permeate the heated oil and butter without causing the latter to burn or turn brown. Which Herbs Give Tomato Sauce the Most Flavor? Herbs are a contentious topic no matter how you slice it. Dried or fresh? Parsley? Oregano? Basil? I went through several rounds utilizing both fresh and dried versions of each ingredient in different combinations. I finally decided on a combination of fresh and dried basil and oregano. Certain herbs dry better than others. Both basil and parsley taste awful when dried; they resemble papery, insipid ghosts of their true selves. On the other hand, oregano does perfectly fine. Although the flavor is slightly different from that of fresh oregano, it is nonetheless potent and herbal in its own right. In my opinion, it is an essential component of a good Italian-American red sauce. 
Why are the herbs different from one another? The biggest distinction is in the way that the specific herbs develop. Both basil and parsley flourish in situations with plenty of water and little risk of the leaves fully drying out. They both have thin, sensitive leaves. On the other hand, stronger herbs from drier areas, like oregano, marjoram, or rosemary, are far more resilient. Because of this, certain herbs' aromatic chemicals also tend to be less volatile, allowing the plants to hold onto them even while they lose moisture in the atmosphere. As a result, tougher herbs from drier climates retain their flavor much better when dried than tender leafy herbs, at least in our opinion as cooks. Although I attempted incorporating the oregano into the sauce as it simmered, the result was tiny chunks that remained hard even after hours of boiling. It is preferable to bloom the oregano in the heated fat before including the tomatoes. Due to the oil's ability to absorb its fat-soluble taste components, the sauce is flavored as a result. Additionally, it sufficiently breaks down the oregano so that none of the tough parts are left behind.
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