Marinara Sauce

I like to make things ahead and freeze them. Something about a full freezer makes me happy. I like to make my own spaghetti sauce, because a lot of the ones you can buy in stores have a lot of additives. Of course I start with canned tomatoes...maybe this summer when someone with a garden has real tomatoes I will buy them and start from scratch. But I made this whole batch, which yielded 14 cups of sauce, for about $4. That's pretty good. And 14 cups of sauce equals about 4.3 jars of store bought spaghetti sauce, which depending on which sauce you buy, is probably going to cost more than $4. If you buy Hunt's in a can that will not be the case. But if you buy almost any sauce in a jar, it will be the case. I got this recipe from Tiffany Stewart's adoption fundraiser cookbook. If you haven't bought one of these yet, you totally should. I already said here, but will say again, this cookbook has a very good mix of all different types of recipes, and proceeds go to rescue a little boy from Ethiopia. Okay. This recipe has no meat in it. The sauce I usually make has meat in it, but then when I wanted to use it for certain other recipes, the fact that it had meat in it was a hindrance, and I ended up buying a jar of meatless. Like if you want chicken parm or something like that.

Marinara Sauce
3 tbsp olive oil
3 cups chopped yellow onion (about 3 medium)
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp minced garlic (about 6 cloves)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp dried basil
1 1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp black pepper
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 cups chicken broth
3 (28 oz) cans crushed tomatoes
1 (6 oz) can tomato paste

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion to pan; cook 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Add sugar and next 6 ingredients. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in vinegar; cook 30 seconds. Add broth and tomatoes; bring to a simmer. Add tomato paste. Cook over low heat for an hour or until sauce thickens, stirring occasionally.

The kids thought this smelled great, until I got to the vinegar step. Then they plugged their noses for approximately 30 minutes. It did smell very strongly for a few minutes there, but they were totally exaggerating. Once it was all together and simmering it smelled great. I asked Steve to smell it, because the nose-holding children were starting to give me a complex. He smelled it and said he would stick his face right in it and drink it up, it smelled so good. My friend Melissa, whose children were warned at the door and also commenced to hold their noses, also said it smelled great. Then she wondered if I was making this to go on the Indian Baked Chicken (previous post) that I had already told her I was making. I assured her I was not, although she is a sport and I bet she would have eaten it anyway.

We had this for the first time tonight, over noodles with garlic bread. It was pretty good, although we are not used to having sauce like that with noodles and no meat. But it was one of those in-a-hurry meals. So while I'm not sure this will be a great sauce to use by itself, carnivores that we are, I think it's going to be great in things like lasagna, or with ravioli. Or chicken. You see what I mean. It was very smooth and very flavorful. I'm glad I made it. Also I'm glad I liked it because I have 6 more containers of it in the freezer ha ha.