Tomato Sauce
Updated January 7, 2025
Aya Brackett for The New York Times
- Total Time
- 1¼ hours
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
5 cups diced yellow onions, red onions or shallots
Fine sea salt
1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled, diced, crushed or puréed tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)
4 to 5 basil stems (optional)
¼ teaspoon red-pepper flakes (optional)
Nutritional analysis per serving
13 grams carbs; 134 calories; 7 grams monosaturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 9 grams fat; 3 grams fiber; 446 milligrams sodium; 2 grams protein; 6 grams sugar
Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
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Preparation
- Step 1
Set a medium Dutch oven or similar pot over medium heat, and add 4 tablespoons olive oil. When the oil shimmers, add onions and a pinch of salt. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook, stirring regularly, until onions are lightly golden and tender, 16 to 18 minutes.
- Step 2
In the meantime, pour the tomatoes into a large bowl and use hands to crush, if using whole tomatoes. Pour about 1 ½ cups water into the can and swirl to rinse any remaining purée off the sides. Add the water to tomatoes in bowl and set aside.
- Step 3
Once onions are soft and golden, add garlic and cook, stirring, until it threatens to turn golden, about 90 seconds. Add tomato paste, if using, and cook until color deepens, about 3 minutes. Add tomatoes and season with salt. If using, add basil stems and red-pepper flakes. Stirring regularly, allow sauce to come to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer until sauce tastes savory and all raw tomato flavor is gone, about 45 minutes.
- Step 4
Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and add remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Use a hand blender to purée, pass through a food mill or let cool, then purée using a blender or food processor. Tomato sauce can be made 1 day in advance and refrigerated or frozen up to 3 months.
Private Notes
Comments
Trained professional chef who has worked in some of the best kitchens in the world, written massively influential book on cooking, and has cooked literally thousands and thousands of professional meals VS opinion of anonymous person online who declares 5C of onions is too much. Come on! Just trust and try the recipe as the pro suggests, and then evaluate it relative to your tastes and preferences. Who knows, you might learn something new.
I find it amusing that people scoff at the onions but insist on adding sugar or honey. If you cook the onions long enough, they'll add plenty of sweetness and more depth of flavor than sugar or honey. Thank you Samin!
Lovely sauce! I used 2 large yellow onions, subbed 1/2c red wine for 1/2c of the water and doubled the red pepper. Super flavorful and delicious.
My sauce tastes good, but learn from my mistake! I doubled the recipe, and I was daunted by hand-chopping 10 cups of onions. I pulled out the food processor and decided to halve each onion and try using the grating disk. The grating disk gave me wet onions with a lot of onion juice pooled in the measuring cup. I switched to quartering the onions and pulsing them with the copping blade. This gave a better result. I should have changed my method earlier, but I can be stubborn. I cooked the onions with the accumulated juices. It took quite a while to get rid of that moisture before browning could begin. I cooked the onions for more than an hour and a half to lightly brown them! It would have been more time efficient to chop the onions by hand! And the grating disk was a really bad idea! If I had cooked the onions for the recommended time (which doesn’t take into account a large pool of onion juice) I expect the onion flavor would have been harsh and unpleasant. After long cooking and some browning, I have mildly-sweet savory onions. I really recommend tasting your cooked onions before adding additional ingredients. If they taste harsh, keep cooking them! Glad I started this sauce early! Lessons learned - grating onions in the food processor is a no. Pulsing with chopping blade is better and probably ok. When the quantity of onions is a significant amount of ingredient volume, taste your cooked onions before proceeding with the recipe.
Dear ones...5 cups of onions are cooked until golden, as written, not caramelized, as not written...which of course would take longer. Golden. Not caramelized.
Added some heavy cream. Yum