Recipe! Marinara Sauce with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

What do you do when you want to serve a no-frills dish that’s easy to transport, serve, and consume, but you don’t want to just open a jar? You get creative!

I was recently asked to make a main a dish for a gathering of fellow committee members from a World War I centennial project. My suggestion of pasta fagioli was well received, but since this was a casual event, I pictured people walking around the chairperson’s home, trying not to slosh soup on themselves and elsewhere.

So, I decided to bring penne with marinara sauce, but to just boil some pasta and open a jar (like I do all the time) didn’t seem like it would be worthy of our special group. After searching for recipes (and remembering my mother-in-law’s awesome sauce), I resolved to create my own marinara. Adding sun-dried tomatoes seemed like it would make my version a bit different and create some texture for those craving a meatball.

I knew I was headed into uncharted territory (for myself), but I have years of experience cooking for my family, so I took photos as I went along in case it all worked out. Since it turned out great, I decided to share it. Here we go!

Marinara with Sun-Dried Tomatoes

Ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

½ onion, diced

1 cup sun-dried tomatoes (soaked in water and sliced)

1 (28 oz.) can diced tomatoes, with liquid

1 (28 oz.) can tomato puree

1 (28 oz.) can tomato sauce

1 (6 oz.) can tomato paste

1 tbsp. oregano

½ tbsp. sweet basil

½ tbsp. parsley

1 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

Black pepper to taste

3 cups water

Fresh basil

Directions:

In a Dutch oven or stock pot, heat the oil at medium. Add the onions, and when they begin to shimmer, add the garlic and sauté, but do not brown, or it will be bitter. Add the sundried tomatoes and sauté some more.

To the sautéed mixture in the pot, add all the canned ingredients and stir in the spices. The mixture will be thick, so add three cups of water. Bring to a boil. Cover, and simmer on low heat for two to three hours, stirring occasionally. At the end, stir in some ribbons of fresh basil.

The sauce will have cooked down to a nice consistency. If you like it thicker, remove the lid, and turn up the heat to medium-high, stirring frequently. If you like a thinner sauce, just stir in some more water.

Add some basil ribbons to the top for garnish. Serve over your favorite pasta and enjoy!

The sauce could also be simmered all day in the slow-cooker or made in an instant cooker for a smaller batch.

Note:

For the WWI gathering, I boiled some penne pasta and mixed it with some of the marinara. Then I dropped it into a slow-cooker and poured more sauce over top. The rest I froze for a later date. At the venue, we plugged in the slow-cooker, set it to low, and the guests served themselves. I also complemented it with a nice loaf of sliced Italian bread.

Whenever I look up a recipe, I look for nutritional facts. Unfortunately, I’ve only ever blogged about one other recipe, my Best-Ever Tofu Scramble. For that one, I cobbled together some nutritional data, but this recipe is a bit more difficult figure out, because it makes so much. The best I can tell from looking at other recipes is that ½ cup of marinara contains 65-70 calories. Add in the pasta, and that number will increase dramatically.

Disclaimer: 

My spouse is 100-percent Italian. Several years ago, my in-laws were thrilled when my Ancestry.com test revealed that I was 11-percent Italian. You should have seen the satisfied glance and grin between my mother-in-law and her sister when I told them. Recently, the Ancestry databases were updated, and they took away my Italian! Well, they can’t take away my Italian spirit and so I hope you like my marinara.