In my opinion, a good tomato sauce is something that you should always have a supply of in the freezer. It’s a cheap, budget friendly staple that can be used in so many family meals: stirred through pasta, on your pizza base, spread over chicken and topped with some mozzarella or as a base for some delicious Turkish eggs or a sausage and bean casserole …
A basic tomato sauce forms the foundation of many of our favourite family meals which is why we should all have that perfect recipe to hand; a recipe that we can pass on to our children!
Want to try my recipe? Here it is – Secret Ingredient Tomato Sauce
But, my go to recipe can be adapted: every person who cooks it can put their own stamp on it by adding a few little extras. Extras that add a little goodness, a lot of flavour and make sure that your sauce goes that extra mile!
But, how can you bulk out your tomato sauce and make it go even further?
- Add some grated vegetables and a tin of stock: carrots, parsnips, courgettes and butternut squash all work well. Because they are grated, they are great for fussy eaters – you can even puree the sauce at the end so that they cannot be detected!
- Add 1 tin of cooked lentils and 2 of stock – I tend to use red lentils; if you cook the sauce slowly you can use dried ones. Alternatively, cook them first or used a tin
- Dice all of those ends of vegetables in your fridge and roast them – stir them through the finished sauce
- Blitz up a punnet of mushrooms; fry them off with the onions for a delicious umami flavour
- Add a tin of beans liquid and all!
Tinned tomatoes are cheap (I find the Aldi ones perfect for this recipe) and are a store cupboard staple: they make the perfect budget friendly addition to your weekly shop and make the most deliciously versatile tomato sauce 🍅
