No need to buy sauce in a jar from the store. Usually they are expensive and have sugar added. Make a batch yourself and keep it in the fridge or freezer. Many recipes require Napoli, when you add homemade sauce to any dish it will go next level.
Uses for Napoli. Pasta, gnocchi and pizza (obviously). On parmigiana’s, eggplant, veal or chicken. In meatballs or added to stews and sauces. One of my favourite uses is for breakfast in Shakshuka. A middle eastern dish where you add chilli and spices to Napoli sauce then poach eggs in the sauce.
Napoli Sauce
Course: Pasta, Main, SauceCuisine: ItalianDifficulty: Beginner10
servings20
minutes40
minutes40
kcalNever buy sauce again. You make it. You know whats in it.
Ingredients
1 x large Onion finely diced
4 x very small cloves Garlic
3 x 400g tins of Italian Tomatoes
Salt & Pepper
Basil stalks (optional)
600mls water
50g Butter
Directions
- Slowly sweat diced onion and garlic in olive oil. Cook with lid on. Low temperature. Until onion has softened and has cooked without colour. Add a little water if onion is catching on the bottom.
- Add the canned tomatoes. Fill half of each can with water. Swirl the water around the can to use up every bit of tomato in the can. ( this step not shown in video )
- Add salt and pepper. Simmer for 40 mins as a guide. Cooking time will depend on how high you cook the sauce. Better to go lower and slower. You want the water you add to the sauce and the water from the tomatoes to be cooked/ evaporated out. Expect sauce to reduce by 30%
- Once the sauce is cooked add the butter. Let it cool a little to a point where it is safe to handle so you and puree the sauce. Once pureed the sauce, if you have any basil stalks left over (maybe from making my pesto) tea bag it in the sauce whilst cooling. Once cooled remove the basil stalks and pour into air tight containers. Better still use straight away.
Recipe Video
Notes
- Never add to much onion. Let the tomato be the hero
- Its important to add water to the tomatoes when cooking the sauce. This will allow you to simmer the sauce longer allowing more flavour to develop. The water you add will evaporate out anyway.
- Estimated cooking time is for this recipe. If you add more tomato expect to cook the sauce longer
- If you don’t eat butter add olive E.V. oil instead
- Sauce will last up to 5 days in the fridge and it freezes really well
