My spaghetti pomodoro
Never buy the jarred stuff again
Hello! Welcome back! Skip all the rambling and scroll right to the bottom of this post for a printer-friendly PDF of the recipe only.
Sometimes it’s the simple things in life, and never is that more true than with tomato sauce. Spaghetti pomodoro, to me, is a love language. It’s a hug after a long, hard day. It’s a prize after a good one. Sometimes to make for friends, for family, for lovers. It’s a balm, a salve, a way of saying, “I care about you” and “I love you” and “I was thinking about you” even — and maybe especially if — you’re making it just for yourself.
In my house, it’s something we make at least once every other week, if not weekly. That’s because it’s as soul-satisfyingly delicious as it is wallet-friendly and efficient. In the time it takes to boil a big pot of water and cook spaghetti, you can make an out-of-this-world good sauce that tastes miles above any of the jarred stuff. Which is probably why I haven’t bought a jar of pasta sauce since I learned how.
I’m not Italian, and there is no world in which I believe that my recipe is the best or most authentic. I’ll leave that to the nonnas and nonnos of the world. But, it is the one we — as in, my family — love the most. Even my toddler gobbles it up and asks for seconds (rare). It always hits the spot, and I’ve had so many requests to share the recipe every time I post a photo to Instagram. So today, I am.
Tell me more
Back in the early Pandemic days, when my husband and I were newlyweds still dreaming of the food we ate during our November 2019 honeymoon in Italy, we stumbled across an Instagram account that would, in some ways, bring Italy to us via a brash New Yorker: Frank Prisinzano. If you don’t follow Frank, he shares methods, rather than recipes, for cooking up traditional Italian dishes at home. The first one we tackled seemed the simplest: sticky garlic marinara. It was his way of cooking a simple pomodoro with canned San Marzanos. Reader, I have never looked back.
Since then, we have made this recipe over and over again, tweaking it to fit our palates and cooking style, creating something similar to Frank’s but that also feels very much a Mashkov original. The sauce uses five ingredients: olive oil, garlic, canned tomatoes, parsley stems, and bay leaves, plus salt. It’s unfussy, though it does get a bit messy, and tastes just beyond. Even if I’m making it for just one or two people, I always do the full recipe with a full pound of pasta because, somehow, the leftovers taste even better.
Before you start
Since the ingredients are few, quality is key. Go for San Marzano tomatoes and good extra virgin olive oil.
For the tomatoes, some prefer to crush them by hand before putting them in the pan. I don’t because, in case you’re new here, I like to dirty as few dishes as possible. I just use my wooden spoon to gently crush them as they’re cooking. This can get a bit messy. An apron is a great idea.
I like to use spaghetti or bucatini here, but you can really use any shape — long or short — that you fancy
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The recipe
Note: recipe videos are posted on my Instagram.
My Spaghetti Pomodoro
Serves: 4
Cook time: 30 minutes
Special tools:
a large, deep frying pan, like the Great Jones Deep Cut
Ingredients:
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes
5 stems parsley
3 bay leaves
Salt
1 lb pasta
Add your olive oil and garlic to a cold pan. You want to make sure you have enough olive oil to fully coat the bottom, so if you need to add a little more, go right ahead. Turn the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic is bubbling and starting to turn golden, about 3-5 minutes. Watch it carefully. We don’t want burnt garlic! At this point, you should also throw a pot of very generously salted water onto the stove to boil.
As soon as the garlic starts to turn golden, dump in your can of tomatoes, juice and all, and shower them with a good pinch of salt. Give it a stir, crank the heat up slightly to medium, and let it start to do its thing. As it cooks, the tomatoes will soften a bit. Using the back of a wooden spoon, gently crush them and begin breaking them down into chunks. The tomatoes will release more juices as they cook. Once the sauce is looking nice and juicy and the tomatoes have broken down a bit, about 5-7 minutes, add in your parsley stems and bay leaves. Stir and continue to cook until your pasta is ready. You will see that the oil and tomato sauce separate a bit around the edges. That’s how you know it’s ready. Remove the bay leaves and parsley stems.
Add your cooked pasta directly to the sauce, along with a ladleful or two of pasta water. Meld everything together. Serve with parmesan cheese, finely chopped parsley, and red pepper flakes, if desired.
Notes
Make ahead: The sauce can be made ahead and warmed up when ready to eat. To avoid overcooking the pasta, I recommend making it and adding it to the sauce just before serving.
Leftovers: Like I said, the leftovers are fantastic. My favorite way to enjoy them may be straight out of the fridge, cold. Don’t knock it till you try it. If you want to warm them up, a hot pan with some more extra virgin olive oil is the way to go. When doing this, I like to move the pasta around as little as possible to get a little crisp on it.
Feeling salty: Salt and taste as you go. I do not include exact measurements for salt because I don’t know what kind of salt you’re using, and different salts have different levels of saltiness.
Comments? Questions?
I’m all ears. Leave a comment below or email me at hellosaturdaytable@gmail.com. There’s nothing I love more than chatting with you all!
yes yes yes!
I make a variation of this at the end of tomato season and freeze a ton to use all year.