- Stanley Tucci uses fresh and canned tomatoes for extra depth in his red sauce.
- The sauce is simple, versatile and ready in under an hour.
- Tucci recommends using it with pasta, pizza, seafood, or even eggs.
Actor and cookbook author Stanley Tucci is very good at making online content that makes your mouth water and motivates you to get into the kitchen and try out some Italian recipes. The star, currently filming the sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, just shared his easy red sauce recipe on Instagram and, folks, he’s done it again. With simple fresh ingredients and double the tomatoes, this easy to prep but flavorful recipe is versatile and delicious.
The first step with any red sauce is choosing tomatoes. In the video, Tucci takes some tomatoes that he admits are starting to age, puts them in a bowl and covers them with water. He then squeezes them by hand to get the seeds out. Then he uses his hand like a colander to grab the meat and skin of the tomatoes and separate them out.
As the tomatoes are soaking and getting their seeds wrung out, Tucci preps a pan on the stovetop with olive oil, then adds chopped onions and garlic. In order to “sweat them down,” Tucci tosses the onions and garlic around the pan with the olive oil and lets them cook with the lid on for a few minutes. When the onion and garlic have cooked down and are nicely browned, he shakes the pan a bit and adds the star ingredient: tomatoes.
Once the tomatoes are in the pan, Tucci cooks them down a bit with a generous pinch of salt. He puts everything in a big bowl and blends it a bit with an immersion blender. Though that’s not always necessary, Tucci says it can help when the tomato skins are a bit too thick. With just a little blending, the mixture becomes much more uniform. The blended sauce goes right back into the pan, where the author-actor adds two cans of tomatoes from Campania.
Once everything is heated through, he adds fresh basil, shredded by hand, and a little more salt. He cooks the mixture down again, smashing down the tomatoes. With a little extra drizzle of olive oil, the sauce is piping hot and ready to go.
His suggestion is to jar up the sauce and keep it in the fridge. For uses, he said to add “pretty much anything to it to make a delicious meal.” He suggested beans, shrimp, peas, sauteed guanciale, peperoncino “or whatever.” It looks to be a perfect base for homemade pizza or to serve over some al dente spaghetti—with or without meatballs and parmesan. If shrimp isn’t your thing, it would be great on chicken cutlets or in lasagna. And if you don’t know already, tomato sauce is great at breakfast, along with eggs and spinach or shakshuka.
However you use this delicious recipe, the simple preparation makes it easy to make on the fly (and the perfect all-purpose sauce to keep in your fridge). With a jar of this stuff in your kitchen, a little pizza or pasta night is always just a few minutes away.
