Quick Cooking Tomato Sauce

Sometimes you want to simmer sauce for all day and other days you don't have the time. You want a good quick sauce and don't want to deal with meat in there.

Tomato Sauce

Olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped

2 T flour
1/2 c red wine
2 28oz can SanMarzano whole Tomatoes*
Basil - handful (1 t of dried - if you must)
2t oregano (1t dried - if you must)
Parsley
salt/pepper

Place olive oil, onions, celery, carrots, and salt in dutch oven. Saute until golden.

You want to get some good caramelization going there

This will take about 15 minutes. Add 2 T flour - don't tell Nonna she'll have a stroke on the spot, but Manmans will recognize this technique. Saute until flour absorbs into the olive oil. Slowly stir in wine until thickened and bubbly. Add tomatoes; breaking up the tomatoes against the side with the spoon. Add basil, oregano, and parsley. Simmer for about 45 minutes. It may look like there is too much liquid but don't worry, it's not.  Using an immersion blender, puree the sauce. (If you don't have an immersion blender, you can puree it in batches in a regular blender). Taste and add additional seasoning as necessary.

If you peek through the steam, you can see the sauce simmering away

Post-puree - again you need to peek through the steam

Final product (without peeking through the steam)

*I prefer the SanMarzano tomatoes because they are less acidic. If you use regular tomatoes, you might have to add a pinch of sugar to counteract the acidity but sometimes that is not even enough. Really the SanMarzano are worth seeking out even though they cost a little bit more.