Make Jarred Pasta Sauce Taste A Whole Lot Better With Giada De Laurentiis' Easy Trick

For those of us that grew up in a time when social media didn't exist, the original pasta queen was and forever will be Giada De Laurentiis. The fan-girl in me would also say she's the queen of Italian cuisine, but that's subjective. Regardless, the Rome-born chef is an expert when it comes to authentic Italian cooking. During her 21-year tenure as a host of various Italian-centered cooking shows on The Food Network, De Laurentiis consistently demonstrated to her viewers the shortcuts she takes that still make Italian dishes taste just as fresh and flavorful as if they were made from scratch. One of her recommended hacks is to use store-bought jarred pasta sauce, heat it up in a pan, and melt a generous amount of parmesan cheese into it. Alternatively, if you have the rind from the real stuff, Parmigiano-Reggiano (what parmesan cheese aspires to be), you can drop that in and let it melt away. 

The cheese or the rind adds a velvety texture to the sauce, while also awakening the dull flavors that store-bought sauces tend to have. The result is a deliciously thick sauce packed with the rich, savory taste known as umami.

If you happen to have the rind of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, by all means use that over parmesan, as the rind has a more concentrated flavor due to the cheese's dry-aging process. As a bonus, every last bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano will get used, since the cheese can be costly and sometimes hard to find outside of Italy.

If cheese or dairy aren't your thing, there are plenty of other tricks to infuse the savory umami flavor that our palates crave into the bland flavors of jarred pasta sauce. One way to achieve this is by sautéing diced onion and mushrooms in a sauce pan. Then, add fresh minced garlic and red pepper flakes (if you prefer a spicier sauce) and mix in the jarred sauce to combine. 

A more simplified version that may not elevate the flavor of jarred pasta sauce as much as De Laurentiis' trick, but will certainly deepen its flavors, is to only add two to three whole cloves of garlic to simmering jarred pasta sauce. This allows the garlic's aromatic flavor to infuse without overpowering the sauce. Once the garlic has infused its punchy flavor, remove the cloves, and pour the sauce onto your favorite Italian dish.

Alternatively, you can use Marmite or Vegemite as flavor enhancers for jarred pasta sauce. If you're unfamiliar with these, they're both savory spreads (from the United Kingdom and Australia, respectively) derived from brewer's yeast, where nutritional yeast also comes from. They're each packed with powerful umami flavor, similar to that which parmesan cheese and Parmigiano-Reggiano bring to jarred sauce. Since each spread has a generous amount of salt, a little goes a long way, especially in a jarred pasta sauce with added salt. Start by adding a teaspoon of either spread to a 24-ounce jar of heated pasta sauce and mix thoroughly. Life's too short to eat lackluster jarred pasta sauce — so take De Laurentiis' advice and add some cheese, or go for the just-as-flavorful alternatives.