Jamie at Home
By Jamie Oliver
The quickest tomato sauce
An absolutely brilliant basic recipe
20 mins
Super easy
makes 500
About the recipe
This sweet tomato sauce is great on pizza, tossed through pasta, with meat or fish… there's so much you can use it for!
Recipe From
Ingredients
4 cloves of garlic
1 bunch of fresh basil (30g)
olive oil
3 x 400g tins of quality plum tomatoes
Top Tip
This sauce is also great to freeze in batches or even in an ice cube tray, so you can defrost exactly the amount you need. But to be honest, it’s so quick to make, you might as well make it on the day you need it.
SUPER-CHARGE YOUR SAUCE
– Add a finely chopped fresh chilli or a pinch of dried chilli flakes to your sauce if you like it hot.
– Flake in a tin of tuna or add a couple of anchovy fillets for a hit of umami. To keep it meat-free, use olives or capers.
– Stir through roasted veg, such as peppers, aubergines or courgettes, or chuck in a handful of spinach for a veggie boost.
TO SERVE:
– Pop it on a pizza or stir it through pasta.
Method
- Peel and finely slice the garlic. Pick the basil leaves and tear into pieces.
- Place a large non-stick frying pan on the heat and pour in 4 generous lugs of olive oil. Add the garlic, shake the pan around a bit and, once the garlic begins to colour lightly, add the basil and the tomatoes. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mush and squash the tomatoes as much as you can.
- Season the sauce with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. As soon as it comes to the boil, remove the pan from the heat.
- Strain the sauce through a coarse sieve into a bowl, using your wooden spoon to push any larger bits of tomato through. Discard the basil and garlic that will be left in the sieve, but make sure you scrape any of the tomatoey goodness off the back of the sieve into the bowl.
- Pour the sauce back into the pan, bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 5 minutes to concentrate the flavours. It will be ready when it’s the perfect consistency for spreading on your pizza.
- Store the sauce in a clean jar in the fridge – it’ll keep for a week or so.
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