I know it’s super easy just to open up a jar of store-bought marinara sauce and pour it over your pasta, and sometimes that’s all the energy we have (no shame), but hear me out. This easy marinara sauce recipe is surprisingly simple, super inexpensive, and you get to control the ingredients (great for those watching their sugar or sodium intake). Plus, homemade marinara sauce is very freezer-friendly, so you can make a double batch now and save the other half for the nights when you have no energy. It heats through in minutes and you’re good to go with zero effort!
What is Marinara Sauce?
Marinara sauce is a simple tomato-based pasta sauce. It’s characterized by its simple list of ingredients, which leads to an uncomplicated and bright tomato flavor. The texture of marinara sauce is usually very uniform without large chunks, which allows it to coat pasta evenly. Marinara sauce is most often used as a sauce for pasta, but it can also be used in many other dishes or as a dipping sauce.
Ingredients for Marinara Sauce
Marinara sauce in its most simple form is just puréed tomatoes (or passata) and a small amount of herbs and spices. I’ve added a couple more ingredients here to satisfy my American palate, but the recipe remains very simple. Here’s what you’ll need to make this marinara sauce recipe:
- Onion: The natural sugars in onion add a touch of sweetness to the sauce, which helps balance the acidity of the tomatoes.
- Garlic: Garlic pairs so well with tomato sauce that I just had to add some to round out the savory flavors. That being said, you can skip it for a more traditional marinara sauce flavor.
- Olive Oil: Olive oil helps the onion sauté without burning and it adds some body to the sauce.
- Crush Tomatoes: A large can of crushed tomatoes provides bulk to this sauce with a fairly smooth texture. If you can not get crushed tomatoes where you live, passata will also work.
- Tomato Paste: A little bit of tomato paste added to the sauce helps thicken it up and intensifies the tomato flavor.
- Herbs: Dried basil and oregano round out the flavor of this sauce and give it a subtle herbal finish.
- Brown Sugar: Adding sugar is a short cut with tomato sauce that helps balance the acidity without having to simmer the sauce for a long period of time. You can skip the brown sugar, but I love the balance it brings to the flavor.
- Salt: Salt is arguably the most important ingredient in any dish as it helps our tongue distinguish between different flavors. If your sauce is not properly salted, you will not be able to taste its full flavor.
What Kind of Tomatoes to Use for Marinara Sauce
This recipe is written using canned crushed tomatoes, which offer both convenience and a low price. While you most definitely can make marinara sauce using fresh tomatoes, that would require several more steps and a reformulation of the recipe to account for the extra water and flavor differences.
When choosing the canned crushed tomatoes for this recipe, keep in mind that there can be quite a drastic flavor difference between brands. If budget is your main concern, this recipe makes a great sauce even when using generic-brand canned tomatoes. But, if you want to get a bit fancier, you can opt for a premium or imported brand, or even buy whole canned San Marzano tomatoes and purée them yourself. Even when you opt for a more expensive canned tomato, this recipe is still very easy and budget-friendly, making it a great option for special occasions like date night in!
How to Use Marinara Sauce
We all know that marinara sauce is great on pasta, but you can use it for other recipes, as well! Here are some other ways to use this easy homemade marinara sauce:
- Use it on pizza for a lighter tomato flavor. It’s particularly great on Margherita pizzas.
- Use it as a dipping sauce for no knead focaccia bread or breadsticks.
- Combine it with other sauces like pesto or alfredo sauce to make a new pasta or dipping sauce.
- Add it to sandwiches, like Meatball Subs.
- Use it as a sauce for Chicken Parmesan.
- Use it as a base for soup by adding more seasoning, broth, and other items like pasta, meatballs, or vegetables.
How to Store And Reheat
As mentioned, this marinara sauce recipe freezes beautifully. After cooking the marinara sauce, transfer it to the refrigerator until completely chilled. The sauce will stay good in the refrigerator for 4-5 days, or you can transfer it to the freezer for longer storage. Just make sure the sauce is in a freezer-safe container, label and date it, and then freeze for up to three months. To reheat, simply transfer the frozen sauce to a saucepot and heat over medium-low, stirring often, until heated through.
Easy Marinara Sauce
Servings 8 (½ cup each)Ingredients
- 1 small yellow onion ($0.37)
- 2 cloves garlic ($0.16)
- 2 Tbsp olive oil ($0.32)
- 2 Tbsp tomato paste ($0.20)
- 1 28oz. can crushed tomatoes ($1.89)
- 1/2 tsp dried basil ($0.05)
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano ($0.05)
- 1 tsp brown sugar (optional) ($0.02)
- 1 tsp salt (or to taste) ($0.05)
Instructions
- Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Add the onion, garlic, and olive oil to a sauce pot and sauté over medium heat until the onions are soft and translucent (about 5 minutes).
- Add the tomato paste and continue to stir and cook for 3-5 minutes more, or until the tomato paste takes on a slightly darker color. This caramelizes the sugars in the tomato paste to give it a slightly sweeter and less acidic flavor.
- Add the crushed tomatoes, basil, oregano, brown sugar, and salt to the pot. Stir to combine and dissolve any tomato paste from the bottom of the pot.
- Allow the sauce to come to a gentle simmer, then reduce the heat to medium-low, partially cover the pot, and allow the sauce to simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- After simmering for 30 minutes, taste the sauce and adjust the salt, sugar, or other seasonings to your liking. If the sauce is too acidic for your liking, you can let it simmer longer (about one hour) or add more sugar. Serve hot or refrigerate until ready to eat.
See how we calculate recipe costs here.
Nutrition
How to Make Marinara Sauce – Step by Step Photos
Dice one yellow onion and mince two cloves of garlic. Add the onion, garlic, and 2 Tbsp olive oil to a sauce pot and sauté over medium heat until the onions are soft and translucent (about 5 minutes).
Add 2 Tbsp of tomato paste to the pot and continue to stir and cook for 3-5 minutes more, or until the tomato paste takes on a slightly darker color. This caramelizes the sugars in the tomato paste, adding a natural sweetness.
Finally, add one 28oz. can of crushed tomatoes, ½ tsp dried basil, ½ tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp brown sugar, and 1 tsp salt. Stir to combine and dissolve any tomato paste from the bottom of the pot. Allow the sauce to come to a gentle simmer.
Once simmering, turn the heat down to medium-low, partially cover the pot, and let the sauce simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Leaving a lid on the pot but slightly ajar can help prevent splatter.
After simmering for 30 minutes, give the marinara sauce a taste and adjust the salt or other herbs to your liking. If it’s still too acidic for your taste, you can either simmer it longer (around 1 hour total), or add more sugar.
Serve the homemade marinara sauce over pasta, use it for a dipping sauce, or freeze it for later!
This recipe is SO good!!! I used 1 can of tomatoes this time and then blanched, peeled, and roughly chopped about 30oz of homegrown tomatoes that were “eeehhh edgy” and needed to be used up. I had made the same sauce a few weeks ago bc I had giant cans of crushed tomatoes and a craving, so I knew I would go well. I also added 12 oz or so of spicy Italian sausage. It makes an absolutely TERRIFIC sourdough pizza!!! 🤤🤤🤤🤤🤤 thanks Beth! Been loving and following your recipes for probably almost 10 years now!
This is one recipe that I am rarely without, but I tend to make a big slow cooker batch of this once every several months and freeze them in ball glass jars. During busy weeknights, I defrost one jar of the marinara and use it to split 2-3 servings. Total game changer. Making it this week for a week of Italian dishes, super geeked. Thanks, Beth!
After preparing the recipe “as is”, I still will admit I didn’t expect it to turn out as great as it did! Nothing about the ho-hum ingredient list suggests the rich flavour you end up with! A definite winner!!! Thanks Beth
Very delicious and I have made several times. I appreciate how you break it down and simplify all your recipes. I have done this recipe in my slow cooker and on the stove top and it always turns out wonderfully! Thank you for sharing!!
Beth, the detailed instructions are not showing up on this recipe. I can only see Step 3.
Very strange! Thank you for letting me know. I don’t know what happened there, but I’ll go see if I can recover that data from the archives. :)
Could i replace the sugar with some natural honey? Im trying to cut back on sugar.
Yes, that would work fine. :)
My mother always added finely shredded carrots instead of sugar or honey. They add sweetness and sneak in more veggies. I didn’t know until I was an adult!
I love that! I actually have a version where I add a few different shredded vegetables and it is SO GOOD. Your mother is one smart lady. :)
This sauce was AMAZING! I went with the slightly sweet version and used it in your eggplant parm recipe. I had some leftover that went well with meatballs (also your recipe) and made a english muffin pizza one night too! Sometimes tomato sauce bothers me, too acidic I think, but this sweeter version really worked for me. Thanks!
This recipe looks great, and I’m planning on trying it for a large family get together here in the next few weeks. I just noticed one issue with your recipe scaler (which is such a great idea!) When you change the number of servings, the scaler doesn’t seem to know how to separate the quantity and the ounces that you have listed. For example, your “2 28oz cans of tomatoes” in this recipes becomes “60 oz. cans of tomatoes” if you scale the recipe up to 12. I know you’re busy, and I very much appreciate what you do; I just thought you might want to be made aware of this glitch.
Thanks for pointing that out! Each recipe needed a little tweaking when we switched to this new recipe plugin, but it looks like this one didn’t quite get fixed. I think it works good now, though! When you scale up it should just scale the number of cans and not the total number of ounces. :)
For a person starting out with cooking, I had to buy the spices. I’m not sure how long it’s been since this was updated but it cost quiet a bit to buy basil, oregano, and bay leaves. Plus it cost $1.36 per 28 oz. can. :( rather than listing the price for 1 tbs, because obviously you can’t buy just 1 tbs, it would be more helpful to see what I would really be spending if I had to buy each ingredient.
But most people don’t buy a brand new package of every single ingredient every time it’s used and I don’t like to consider an ingredient free if it’s already in my kitchen. So, I consider the cost of the amount used whether I had to buy it new that time or if I already had some on hand. This is the method that is used in the food service industry to track cost and profit and I find it most helpful in my own kitchen as well.
I am not sure where you live but if your grocery store has a Hispanic section spices are much cheaper there. They are also fresher. A bottle of oregano that is twice the size of McCormick is $1.99. Hope this helps.
I love this! I just posted a 5 Ingredient Spicy Marinara Sauce recipe on my new blog. I wonder how much those 5 ingredients cost me! I’ll have to pay attention to the price next time. I’ll also have to give your recipe a shot, too!
http://www.fiveingredientfoodie.com/2016/08/five-ingredient-spicy-marinara-sauce_16.html
Boooo! How can you love something you haven’t tried? You only commented to promote your own blog.
I LOVE this recipe, but can I use it for my new instant pot?
I haven’t tried to make a sauce like this in my Instant Pot yet, so I’m not sure. :)
Did you ever make this in a pressure cooker? Do you have any advice for timing? I think this would make well in it, but I prefer having guidance in my cooking.
I did some searching, and saw some people struggled with making marinara on high pressure (sometimes it was just thick enough to burn trying to get to pressure), and since it just needed some time to meld, I decided to put it on low pressure for 15 minutes and let it natural pressure release, to minimize the opportunity for splattering. It seems to have worked really well. I’m going to make the roasted vegetable ziti recipe on here with it in a day or two, and I put the rest of the sauce in the freezer to pull out as needed.
Awesome! Thanks for following up with how it worked out for you. I know that will help a lot of people. :)
Nothing like having this sauce handy. Try freezing in ice trays and then storing the cubes in zipped locked bags. That way you can pull out enough for one or more and not have to worry about extra that won’t be used.
This recipe sounds amazing! With the tomatoes, is that 2 28oz cans or 2 cans of 28oz each? I’m assuming it’s the latter!
Oops, I meant 2 28oz cans or 2 cans equalling 28oz altogether… Sorry
Sorry, but this left me more confused… Is it 56 oz total or 28 oz total?
“2 28oz cans” would be 56 oz, but “2 cans equaling 28oz altogether” would be, well… 28oz.
Thanks, can’t wait to try this!
Two cans that are 28oz. each (56oz. total) :)
Two cans of 28oz each. :)
This is actually a great recipe that I now use as part of my standard weekly meals. It freezes well, it’s easy to make, and it’s tasty.
I use 2 cans of diced tomatoes and one large can of crushed tomatoes because I like the sauce chunky.
I also add a little more brown sugar because I like my sauces sweet, but this recipe by itself is great.
I quite liked this but I think the full-on sugar and balsamic the recipe calls for were too much for my 4yo daughter. I think next time I’ll try your savory version.