Add Some Flair To Basic Spaghetti Sauce With This Canned Addition

Spaghetti is one of the first dishes many young cooks learn to make, and while homemade pasta sauce has its advantages, there are many great uses for store-bought ingredients too. In fact, adding tomato paste to your store-bought or homemade spaghetti sauce could be exactly what you need to take your version of the classic dish to another level.

Adding tomato paste right out of the can or tube to your spaghetti sauce gives it a richer, more distinct tomato flavor. However, if you want to make the sauce even more delicious, caramelizing the tomato paste before adding it to the sauce itself can warrant even better results. To do this, saute your tomato paste in a pan with oil, butter, or the rendered fat from a protein on medium heat, stirring frequently for a few minutes.

You'll only want to cook the paste until it turns dark red; overcooking tomato paste can produce an incredibly overwhelming, potentially burnt flavor that'll likely tarnish the dish. However, once the paste darkens and its smell begins to strengthen, you can add jarred pasta sauce, tinned tomatoes, or fresh tomatoes to the pan and combine everything together. This will give both store-bought and homemade sauces a unique burst of sweetness and intensify the umami flavor that makes spaghetti so great.

Other than giving your pre-existing spaghetti sauce a much-needed boost, caramelized tomato paste can also act as a core ingredient for its own pasta sauce. For those who don't know, tomato paste is made of concentrated, cooked tomatoes, meaning it has all the makings of a great tomato sauce when accompanied by the right ingredients. So, by adding a liquid — like hot water, broth, or cream — plus your favorite herbs, seasonings, meats, and vegetables to a pan of caramelized tomato paste, you get a perfectly suitable homemade sauce for your spaghetti without needing to make it from scratch.

There are several ways to improve this recipe for spaghetti sauce, with my favorite being the inclusion of cherry tomatoes. Caramelizing sliced cherry tomatoes right in with the paste allows the fresh tomatoes to caramelize as well, giving the eventual sauce an even more amplified flavor overall. Plus, the juice from cherry tomatoes reduces, giving the dish the most ideal texture possible.