Recently I've been taking a lot of questions from people who are just starting to cook,
and I also spend a lot of time teaching my children how to cook.
This is one of the best ways to get started, if you want to put together a real meal.
This is also one of my favorites, for a couple other reasons.
Once you throw everything together, and there's only six ingredients in it, it sits on the
back of the stove and does its own thing, so you can be off doing something else.
The other thing that I like about it so much is that you can use this basic marinara sauce
recipe in a lot of other dishes.
So we're going to do a little double duty with this one.
We're going to make the marinara sauce, we're going to have that for one meal on its own,
but we're going to take the rest of the sauce and turn it into a couple other things.
So, super easy.
And yes, I have large proportions of everything.
Not only do I cook for a lot of people, I like to have extra, extra, extra, because
it freezes beautifully.
So I'm starting off with about a half a cup of olive oil.
And I think, actually, a half a cup is what I use in the standard recipe.
I've noticed when I double it, at medium-high heat, when I double it, if I do increase the
olive oil, it gets too oily.
But you want that robust flavor.
And don't use extra virgin olive oil, because you'll just blow the flavor when it cooks
that long.
So that's just plain regular.
Alright.
I've got two pretty big onions, that I just chopped up, and about four stalks of celery.
I like them pretty little.
Easy with the celery, because you know you can make things too sweet, especially when
you've got something that simmers for a while.
And this is all you do at first.
You're going to saute this, just for a few minutes, just to start to letting it get nice
and sweaty.
Alright.
it looks like a ton of garlic, but remember, we're making probably, a gallon of this stuff,
or more.
So I think in a simple recipe, if I made just the original amount, I'd have about four cloves,
chopped up.
Chop them pretty fine, and it's going to simmer for a long time.
So it's going to get nice and sweet.
Now, at this point, I have bay leaves and crushed red pepper.
You can leave the crushed red pepper out if you want to.
See that?
Red pepper.
Throw it all in there.
I love it.
Just a little bit of heat in the background, really nice against those onions.
So I put it in there.
Now, let that red pepper kind of have a chance to bloom a little bit, with the onions and
the celery.
So here's what we're going to do.
We're going to give this is a minute to let everything kind of start coming together,
and then, there's only one other step.
I'll show you that in a minute.
Actually, I had a really good question thrown at me a minute ago.
I've got a borrowed member of the horde.
I stole somebody else's kid, and she wanted to know, she kind of looked at me and said,
"Sweaty?"
OK, sweating vegetables; you're going to cook them on a medium-low heat until they begin
to release their moisture.
That's all there is to it.
It's like an easy workout, light and easy.
So this is what it looks like.
Come in here and look at this.
You see that?
Some of it's the olive oil, but see how the veggies are starting to get a little bit soft,
but they're not freaking out and falling apart yet?
Here we go.
Crushed tomatoes.
And I've done this with diced tomatoes.
Actually, if I'm just going to make enough to do one meal, which is not very often, but
if I do that, I am going to use diced tomatoes.
I like the texture.
And if you happen to have fabulous, in-season, ripe, fresh tomatoes, by all means, go ahead
and use those.
This is actually one of those recipes that I remember my mother making in the summer,
when we had bushels of tomatoes.
And we would can it.
You can freeze it, too.
So we're going to stir this all together, just like this, a little salt and a little
pepper, not too much.
Because what we're going to do is, we're going to let this go for an hour or two.
We're going to let it sit here on the back of the stove.
We're going to turn it down until it's just barely simmering, and you notice how I've
got this nice wide pot?
That's to let as much of the liquid in those tomatoes, to evaporate, as possible.
Because all the water that comes out, means that much more flavor is left behind, and
it concentrates everything beautifully.
So, this is going to sit here and simmer, darken in color, deepen in flavor, and we
will come back to it.
Ignore all this stuff, that's another video, we're not doing yet.
But, what I wanted to show you on this marinara, you see this?
You don't have big tomato lava happening.
It's not like, popping up and splattering everywhere.
This is like the perfect little simmer on this sauce.
So we're just going to let this one do its thing.
And every once in a while, I might stir it, if I remember, and if I don't, nobody cares.
Our marinara is ready.
It's actually been ready for a while, but that's one of the things about this dish is
that, the longer you let it go, the sweeter and mellower and richer the flavors are going
to get.
And I've had kids in here already, getting into it.
But this is the first thing you can do with the marinara.
Actually, maybe the second, because I made some roasted garlic focaccia a minute ago,
and I used it for the dipping sauce.
You can turn that stuff into bread sticks.
So this is the second thing you can do with it.
So I thought I had some fettuccine, but I didn't, I was out, but I've got some spaghetti.
And, now a traditional Italian thing would be to add the pasta to the pot that the sauce
is in, but my kids are weird.
Some of them like a lot of sauce, some of them don't.
And Americans have grown up with our sauces being added kind of like that.
See, look?
It's cute.
A little parmesan cheese.
If you have the good stuff, use the good stuff.
I don't have the good stuff.
I've got the cheap stuff.
It still tastes pretty good, Now, simple marinara sauce.
Now somebody asked me a minute ago about what would really be good, and that would be a
meat sauce.
Well, guess what?
You're already halfway to the point of having a bolognese, which is a meat sauce.
And you've done half the work already.
But, for now, marinara.
I don't have a fork, I have a spoon.
Now I have a fork, nice.
Let's see.
Yeah, I'm pretty good at this cooking thing.