So, how do we feel about bottled sauces? Anyone?
I grew eating them but haven't had one in years and don't miss them at all. What I find puzzling about bottled sauce usage is that so many people seem to only use them after much "doctoring"-sauteing onions, garlic, adding herbs etc which sort of leaves me wondering why they are starting with a prepared sauce to begin with. Swap out the prepared sauce for canned tomatoes and you just made a homemade sauce. I mean I can see the convenience of using a bottle sauce but adding things to it brings the prep time to about what it would take to start from scratch it seems sort of counterproductive. And surely if the bottled sauces were so tasty that using canned tomato would be vastly inferior, you wouldn't have to add a thing to them.
So do you doctor bottled sauces? Why or why not.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Bottled Tomato Sauce
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10 comments:
Back when I first started cooking, I would use a bottled sauce and doctor it up. But for the past 10 years, I won't use it and do all I can to get my friends to not use it as well. It's just as easy and more tasty to use canned tomatoes, some onion and spices to create your own sauce in the same time (&less money) it takes to boil water and make pasta!
I don't doctor, but I also use bottled sauce for pizza sauce. I live alone so it's better for me to just use a small amount of sauce which I can store in the fridge, then trying to find space for canned goods in my cupboards. I'd like to make everything from scratch, but it doesn't fit in with my kitchen space or lifestyle.
Making your own sauce seems daunting, until you realize how easy it is. The only benefit to using the jar is time, I think. It doesn't take long to make a simple sauce with canned tomatoes, and you can make a lot and freeze it, but we've been trained by the advertising industry to treat ourselves to convenience: pour and serve. The hidden message in the ads is that making it yourself is outdated, unnecessary, time-consuming, and not worth the effort. All of which, IMO, is wrong :)
never. use. it.
I never use bottled sauces, but I DO use Bionature brand organic tomato paste for dishes such as pizzas and lasagnas. It is amazing.
I don't doctor because I don't use them. I just start with a box of stewed tomatoes and 'doctor' it up.
We use it sometimes. Chris finds any piece of tomato larger than "petite diced" totally unacceptable in his sauce, so I let him be in charge of pasta as a punishment for his pickiness. Sometimes we get Trader Joe's marinara, but lately we've been better about making our own from canned tomatoes. To be perfectly honest, I can't say that I've ever had pasta sauce -- homemade, bottled, or otherwise -- that has really impressed me enough to wonder about the recipe.
I use Newman's Own "Sockarooni" bottle sauce -- it's delicious.
What a coincidence! Today I appeared as a chef in a Heinz ketchup commercial.
I have to admit to loving some Prego from time to time.
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