In episode 46 we are making Tomato Cream Sauce Pasta for dinner. Susie shares this amazing pasta dinner that has a semi-homemade tomato cream sauce. Use your favorite jarred tomato sauce (we love Rao’s) and doctor it up with onions, garlic, herbs and cream. Add a side salad and garlic bread for a complete dinner, easy enough for a weeknight!
Transcript
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046 Tomato Cream Sauce Pasta_final
Intro: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: All right, today we’re going to start a little different. I am going to read a review and comment on this recipe for Tomato Cream Sauce that goes awesome with pasta. This is from Robin. Five Stars. This is our favorite restaurant sauce and I’ve tried multiple times to make it. Your recipe is the easiest and best-tasting ever. The whole family goes nuts over it. It is delicious.
Thank you so much for the five stars in the comment, Robin. Totally appreciate it and it couldn’t be more true. This is a super easy 30-minute dinner that tastes like it is restaurant quality, like a tomato cream sauce that you would get at your favorite Italian restaurant. It uses super simple ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen.
So as long as you’ve got some tomato paste, onions, garlic, a few seasonings, heavy cream milk, and some of your favorite jarred marinara sauce, you’re going to be good to go with this recipe, and I bet your kids are going to love it.
Tips and Tricks: So let’s talk about a few tips with the ingredients and just the recipe in general. First of all, let’s talk about pasta sauce. Every family has a pasta sauce that they love. I have one that I would love for you to try sometime, and I’m not sponsored by them. We just love it so much and it was a big change for us when we switched to this brand. We’ve been using RAOs pasta sauce and their traditional marinara or their tomato basil marinara is so good. I mean, it is like heads and tails above other brands. The best place I find to get it is actually Costco. If you have a Costco nearby or a Costco membership, it’s much less expensive than if you buy it at your traditional grocery store. Or I think Target or Walmart both carry it as well and it’s going to be a little bit cheaper there. It is one of the more expensive marinara sauces, but it’s worth it. I mean, your box of pasta’s going to be like a buck, so spend a little bit more on your marinara sauce and you won’t regret it.
Alright, the other thing is with your tomato paste. When you buy tomato paste, generally it’s not going to call for the entire four-ounce can of tomato paste. In this recipe, you are only using, let’s see, one tablespoon of tomato paste. I think an entire can is like four ounces. So what you can do is actually freeze the remaining tomato paste that you have in that can. What you want to do is just scoop it out in tablespoon portions, put it on a little rimmed baking sheet, pop it in the freezer for like an hour, and then once it’s frozen, pull it out, put it in a Ziploc baggy, and those little pucks of tomato paste will be good for, it says up to three months. But really, I think that you could keep tomato paste for like six months at least, and still have it be good in the freezer.
The other tip though with tomato paste is if your grocery store has tomato paste in the little tube, it almost looks like a metal toothpaste tube, buy it that way. Because that will stay good in your fridge for a really long time.
The last tip that I have with this recipe is since you’re using pasta and making a sauce, I recommend multitasking here. So while that pasta is cooking, you’re going to make your sauce. It’s going to make dinner come together much faster.
All right, so those are all my tips. Let’s get on to making the full recipe. You’re going to start by obviously boiling your water. You know what? I do have another tip for you. When you cook pasta, you need to salt the heck out of your pasta water. I’m telling you, put in way more salt than you would ever imagine. Get that water super salty. You can even taste the water, so dip your finger or dip a spoon in there. It should taste like salty sea water. It should be very, very salty. That’s your opportunity to season your pasta.
Tomato Cream Sauce Recipe: Get a big pot of salted water boiling, and cook your pasta.
Now onto the sauce. You can use a skillet or you can use a saucepan, but you’re going to pop it over medium-low heat and add one tablespoon of olive oil or you could use a canola or vegetable oil. You could even use avocado oil or something. Whatever neutral oil you use in your kitchen will work here. You’re going to add half a cup of diced onions. For these types of Italian recipes, I like to use either yellow or white onions. Add three chopped garlic cloves. Get that softening in the oil. It will take somewhere between five to eight minutes to get the onion nice and softened.
Now, here’s one thing I will tell you about this sauce. If you have kids that hate onions or don’t want to see any onions, my son used to call him pickles when he was little. If your kids don’t want to see any onion pickles, then skip the onions altogether. But I would still recommend adding the garlic in.
Okay, so then after your onions in, your garlic is nice and softened, you’re going to add in one teaspoon of dried basil, one teaspoon of dried oregano, half a teaspoon of kosher salt, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and then that one tablespoon of tomato paste. You’re going to give it a stir all around the pot until the tomato paste is coating the onions and the garlic.
Now, of course, I have another tip. One tip about your dried herbs. Dried herbs, of course, lose flavor and potency over time in your spice cabinet. One way to wake your spices up is to put them in the palm of your hand and then with the fingers on the other hand, rub and crush that dried basil and dried oregano, and it will wake up the spices and release their oils into your sauce.
Once that tomato paste is coating the onions and garlic, you’re going to stir in one cup of heavy cream and half a cup of milk. You want to bring that to a light simmer over that medium-low heat and let it simmer for about five to eight minutes. You want it to coat the back of a wooden spoon so it’s getting thick as it’s simmering.
In the end, you’re going to stir in two cups of your favorite jarred marinara sauce and mix it in with the cream mixture and that’s it. Everything’s done. You’re just going to add your pasta to the sauce, give it a good toss. You can taste your sauce, of course, for additional seasoning. If you want more salt or more pepper. You can add more red pepper flakes for a little bit of a spicier sauce. When you’re serving it, you can garnish it with Parmesan cheese or some fresh chopped parsley.
Now sometimes if we want to have a little bit of protein added, a grilled chicken or a sauteed shrimp would be excellent with this pasta. The other thing I want to tell you is that this is actually a great gluten-free cream sauce that you can serve to any of your gluten-free family members. So just make sure that the jarred marinara sauce that you use is gluten-free, and then use a gluten-free noodle for your pasta. Since we’re not using flour to make the cream sauce, it’s a great gluten-free option.
Now as far as serving goes, of course, since this is a pasta recipe, I recommend just pairing it with a nice green side salad, whether you do Caesar salad or I have a great recipe for a big Italian salad on Mom’s Dinner that I will link in the show notes for you. It’s full of veggies and has a basil vinaigrette that’s drizzled over top. Then of course garlic bread.
All right. That does it for this full recipe. If you’re enjoying these episodes of Let’s Make Dinner, I would love to have you subscribe or follow in your preferred podcast player. It just makes it easier for you to find all of our future episodes right in your podcast feed. Of course, as always, I will eat all of the recipes that I talked about in this episode right in the show notes for you.
Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.
Tips Shared
Freeze your leftover tomato paste! Scoop it out into 1 tablespoon portions and then freeze on a baking sheet, transfer to a freezer baggie. Keep for 3 months (but I think it would be fine up to 6 months!).
SALT YOUR PASTA WATER… like a lot! You want the water to taste like really salty sea water.
Multitask the recipe. Cook the pasta while you are making the sauce. Dinner will come together way faster.
Give your dry herbs a little rub in the palm of your hand to wake them back up and release their oils/flavor.
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