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Tomato Sauce

This is a general, all-purpose framework for turning some form of tomatoes into some form of sauce. You can use fresh tomatoes or canned (the latter are really quite surprisingly good sometimes), and include or omit garlic, basil, or other add-ins. The only real non-negotiable ingredients are tomatoes (duh), onion, and some kind of fat (I prefer butter).

Sauce

1. Prep. If starting with canned tomatoes, skip this step. if starting with whole tomatoes (which you should really only ever do if you grew them yourself or got them fresh at a farmers market, grocery store tomatoes are kinda sad), first, peel the tomatoes. The easiest way to do this is to score them with an X pattern cut as shallow as possible while still breaking the skin, trying to cover the whole surface area of the tomato, blanch them briefly in boiling water, then dunk into an ice bath. After this, the skins will slip right off. After peeling, cut out the stem, core, and any green or brown bits, and go to the next step

2. Base layer. Couple of variables here, though a perfectly good (in fact, my usual go-to) tomato sauce can also skip this entire step:

   • If you want meat with your sauce (pancetta/guanciale/bacon for an amatriciana, ground beef or pork for a bolognese) you'll start out by sautéing that in some sort of fat (probably olive oil), less fat for meat with a lot of fat already in it, to brown and render out fat from the meat
   • If you want onion in the final sauce, you'll chop them finely and sauté them with whatever fat you've got (either from the meat, or olive oil or butter if you're not making a meat sauce). Remember to always add a bit of salt when sautéing onion like this, not for flavor but to draw out the moisture. If you just want onion flavor but not bits of onion in the final sauce, it's added whole later (so ignore this bullet point).
   • If you feel like it (sometimes I do, usually I don't) you can also mince garlic here and sauté that in with everything else. Add a little after the onion, as garlic cooks faster than onion, unless you want something roastier (usually you don't for tomato sauce)
   • The traditional (so I'm told) thing to do with amatriciana, but also nice with all variations, is to add in a little crushed red pepper with the fat to flavor it slightly, but do this late so it doesn't burn
   • If you have tomato paste on hand and feel like using it, it's also nice to fry that in the oil for a little bit - usually I'd do that around the same time as the garlic

   If you're making tomato paste from your sauce, skip all of this - paste is an ingredient, not a sauce on its own, so imo should be as neutral as possible (i.e. just tomato).

3. Tomato layer. Not a whole lot to do here, just add all of your tomatoes - either your peeled and de-cored tomatoes from step 1 if you're using whole tomatoes, or an entire can of whole, peeled san marzano tomatoes, including the juice in the can - to a pot over medium-high heat. If you need more fat or if you skipped step 2, this is where you'd add it - a classic and my personal favorite is like 2/3rds to 3/4ths of a stick of butter, but you can also go with olive oil. If you skipped the onion in step 2, add that here too - usually that'd just be a fist-sized amount of onion or so peeled but left with the stem on so you can fish it out from your final sauce later (and snack on it!). Also salt here, again not to taste but primarily to draw out moisture from the various ingredients.
4. You can cook that for a wide variety of times, especially depending on how hot you make your stove - there ends up being lot of liquid in there, so you can go (in my experience) a reasonable amount hotter than you expect without burning the sauce, though obviously your mileage may vary. The main thing you're looking for is the whole chunks of tomato to break down, and the whole sauce to get a texture that looks like it'll end up sticking to pasta nicely. In all versions of this, stir pretty regularly with a wooden spoon, and use the spoon to crush the big chunks of tomato occasionally.
5. Final layer. Usually I don't do anything here - but if you feel like it, usually right as you take stuff off the heat is where you'd add basil, if you're using it. You can also add sugar to balance out too much acidity from an especially acidic tomato here - I'm not going to tell anyone. Also salt, but make sure to account for the extra salt you're gonna get from the pasta water (see step 6)
6. Pasta. You know how to cook pasta, I'm not going to tell you that. But, like, salt your water until it tastes too salty, and remember to move the pasta itself directly into the sauce pot from the pasta pot before it's completely done cooking and without straining, bringing along some of the pasta water (and a little extra for good measure) then finishing the pasta in the sauce. You know, the thing you do for pasta. Remember the pasta water will have salt in it, so adjust for that when salting the sauce overall (I have made this mistake and ended up with too-salty pasta sauce).

Paste

Start with the above recipe for tomato sauce, noting especially that (in my opinion) you should skip step 2 entirely. Keep cooking the sauce until it's too thick for pasta sauce (but don't burn it!), then spread it out across some sort of lined sheet pan (like a silpat, if you've got one) and bake in the oven at like 250-300 degrees for a hell of a long time - I've seen this take like 10 hours, for an especially juicy batch of tomatoes, but obviously keep a close eye on it because it definitely will burn eventually. You're looking for the end result to be the texture of tomato paste, because that's what the recipe is for. Especially if you're using garden-grown or otherwise fresh tomatoes, you'll notice quite a few seeds in the final product - don't worry too much about those, they've never bothered me. Once everything's done and cooled down, store in a jar in a fridge, topped with olive oil to seal things off and prevent oxidation. Use in all your future endeavors, including the tomato sauce recipe above itself. Tomato sauce is a beautiful oroborous.