Spaghetti Sauce from Tomato Paste
A simple, tasty recipe from everyday ingredients! Tomato paste is the base of many different dishes — gravies, dressings, and sauces. A simple tomato sauce, you might think, yet paired with pasta it can turn a dish into a real culinary masterpiece!
Cooking method
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Step 1:
Gather the ingredients for the sauce.
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Step 2:
Crush the garlic with the flat of a knife blade, pressing hard on each clove. Peel each clove. From here you can finely chop it if you love garlic. I just fry it and then take it out.
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Step 3:
If you're using fresh basil, rinse it well and dry it, then chop it finely. My frozen basil was already cut up; I just chopped it a bit more with a knife.
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Step 4:
Take a skillet or saucepan, depending on how much sauce you want to make. But I'd suggest a pan with high sides — the sauce spatters a lot as it cooks. Set the pan over the heat and pour in the oil. Add the garlic and fry it for a few minutes. I then took out the fried cloves; you can leave them in. For me, the aroma the garlic gives the oil while frying is enough.
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Step 5:
Add the tomato paste and water. Stir well until smooth. Cook the sauce for about 3 minutes.
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Step 6:
Add the herbs, salt, and pepper. Stir. Keep the sauce over the heat for another minute — it'll bubble away. Stir once more. The sauce is ready!
- Cook the spaghetti, drain it in a colander, and let the water run off. Then return it to the pot and pour the sauce over the top. Toss, plate, and serve right away. Or serve the spaghetti separately and spoon the sauce over it on the plates. If you made the sauce in a skillet, you can add the spaghetti right to it. Since the main ingredient is tomato paste, choose it carefully. It shouldn't contain extra additives — only tomatoes, tomato juice, or tomato purée. Besides garlic, you can add onion to the sauce; cut it up first and fry it like the garlic. Use any fresh herbs you like — basil, as a hallmark of Italian cooking, suits it best of all. You can replace fresh herbs with dried seasonings. This version of the sauce is the simplest; tomato sauce can also be made with fresh tomatoes, cream, or sour cream, and thickened with flour — there are countless variations!
Caloric content of the products possible in the composition of the dish
- Garlic - 143 kcal/100g
- Fresh basil - 27 kcal/100g
- Dried basil - 251 kcal/100g
- Tomato paste - 28 kcal/100g
- Salt - 0 kcal/100g
- Water - 0 kcal/100g
- Ground red pepper - 318 kcal/100g
- Olive oil - 913 kcal/100g
