The Popular Shortcut You'll Never See Guy Fieri Using

Despite spending a lot of time visiting restaurants across the country on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives," Guy Fieri loves nothing more than cooking delicious food from scratch for himself and others; be they pretzels (one of Fieri's favorite salty snacks) or Donkey Sauce cheeseburgers. He also tries to take as few shortcuts as possible. Not all ingredients are created equal, and the Mayor of Flavortown understands that some ingredients need to be made fresh to truly reach their potential. For Fieri, the prime example of this is none other than pasta sauce, an ingredient that the California native never buys pre-made from the store.

Guy Fieri has been passionate about cooking ever since he made a steak dinner at 8 years old, but he recently revealed his refusal to use jarred pasta sauce in an interview with The Kitchn, saying that he personally has never been one to avoid making sauce at home (or anywhere else, for that matter). "I'm not much of a shortcut guy. Some might say that I'm the opposite," Fieri admitted. "When we go camping ... we bust out full Chinese spreads or chicken Parm, garlic bread, and big batches of pasta. But I'm still making that pasta sauce versus going with store-bought — camping or not."

There are plenty of flavor benefits to making pasta sauce at home compared to buying it from the store, but Guy Fieri's reasoning for this preference is much more personal than that. "Cooking is my favorite pastime and how I spend time with family and friends," the chef explained. "I don't want to shortchange myself or them."

Fieri has a handful of go-to homemade pasta recipes to lean on whenever he needs to complete one of his signature dishes. He's a big fan of using fire-roasted tomatoes alongside more common ingredients like extra virgin olive oil, yellow onions, minced garlic, fresh basil, fresh oregano, salt, and pepper for both ragu and marinara sauce. The reason for using this specific kind of tomato is to give the sauce more depth and a nice, smoky flavor that's hard to capture otherwise.

For a good, creamy alfredo sauce, Fieri adds white wine to the mix. In his classic Cajun Chicken Alfredo recipe, the chef uses white wine to deglaze his pan after adding extra virgin olive oil, minced garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes; allowing it to work its magic right before adding heavy whipping cream to finish the job. This combination is a perfect way to balance alfredo, giving the rich and creamy base a hint of acidity and crispness that makes for a more varied sauce overall.