This simple and rustic, naturally purple-hued San Marzano tomato sauce is not to be underestimated. With just a few quality ingredients, you can be enjoying a big ole bowl of beautiful, sweet, tomatoey pasta with chewy 'pasta fresca' (fresh egg pasta). And it only takes 30 minutes.
Adults and kiddos alike love this pasta, and the sauce is so versatile that you can eat it with just about any pasta shape. Pile on the freshly grated cheese, or eat it all by itself.
This pasta sauce recipe serves two hungry adults, but feel free to double it to make it for the family or your next vegan dinner party!
If you love vegan pasta recipes, you may want to try Sweet Corn and Zucchini Pasta (Summer Pasta), or this Italian Spaghetti w/Zucchini & Fresh Tomatoes.
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Fresh San Marzano & Purple Carrot Pasta Ingredients
It can't be stressed enough that the quality of ingredients is always important, but in this pasta dish that uses so few ingredients, it's key to getting the best flavor. Beyond that, this is a totally easy pasta to make. Scale the recipe up or down for your own needs and freeze any leftover sauce for easy weeknight meals.
- fresh Marzano plum tomatoes (sub canned tomatoes)
- onion (purple or any variety)
- purple carrot (or regular carrots)
- extra virgin olive oil
- garlic cloves
- maccheroni pasta (or other preferred noodles)
How to Make Fresh San Marzano Tomato Pasta
- Blister the garlic. Add the olive oil and garlic to a pot and heat on medium-high, cooking the garlic in the oil until it's blistered and fragrant (just a couple of minutes).
- Sauté the onions and carrots. When the garlic is blistered, add the diced onion and carrots, season with salt, and cook until the onions are translucent and have turned a light purple color (if using purple carrots) but not browned.
- Add the tomatoes and finish the sauce. Next, add the diced tomatoes, season with a little more salt, give everything a good stir, place a lid (with no holes) over the top, reduce the sauce to a simmer, cook for approximately 25 minutes. Check the sauce every 5 minutes or so and give it a quick stir, place the lid back on, and continue cooking until it's thick and shiny. Turn off the heat while you cook the noodles.
- Cook the pasta. About 5 minutes before the sauce is finished cooking, drop the fresh maccheroni into a pot of lightly salted boiling water and cook for 5 minutes to "al dente" (or as indicated on the package). During the last minute of the pasta cooking time, add about ¼ cup of pasta cooking water to the sauce and stir it around. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasonings if needed. If the sauce is still too thick, add a spoonful of starchy water at a time until it's the perfect consistency.
- Assemble the pasta. As soon as the pasta is cooked through, strain and place the noodles directly into the pasta sauce, turn the heat on and toss everything together, remove from heat, and serve immediately. Enjoy!
Garden Fresh San Marzano & Purple Carrot Tomato Sauce Pasta Step-by-Step Recipe Photos
Ways to Customize this Sauce
This sauce is quick, easy to make, and uses ingredients you probably already have right in your own pantry or growing in your garden. And if you're wondering about whether or not to grate some cheese over the top...do it if you're not vegan.
Grated parmesan or Grana Padano makes the perfect savory cheesy contrast to this sweet tomato sauce. If you want to eat less refined carbs, substitute whole wheat or gluten-free pasta noodles.
- blanch the tomatoes to remove the skins before adding the tomatoes to the pan (I didn't do this step because most of the tomatoes I used had been sliced from the night before)
- make it spicy by adding whole dried peppers to the oil with garlic in the beginning, or add a pinch (or three) of crushed red pepper flakes
- add a beefy, porky, or smokey flavor by throwing in a little ground beef, ground pork, or pancetta and cook it with the olive oil and garlic until cooked through then proceed with the remaining instructions
- add chopped celery to the onions and carrots if you happen to have some on hand
- substitute the onions with shallots
- use regular canned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes (Mutti brand or other high-quality San Marzano tomatoes is highly recommended)
FAQ's
Official DOP San Marzano tomatoes are plum tomatoes grown exclusively in a small region between Naples and Salerno, Italy, in volcanic soil. They're longer and thinner than typical Roma tomatoes with fewer seeds, making them ideal for pasta sauces and pastes. "DOP" stands for Protected Designation of Origin, a status issued by the Italian government ensuring the tomatoes meet rigorous quality control standards for where they're grown and how they're harvested. San Marzano tomatoes are now also grown outside Italy (even in the U.S.), but only those with the DOP seal come from the original Italian region. Not all canned Italian tomatoes are San Marzanos, so look for the DOP label if authenticity matters to you.
Yes, you can! Just replace with equal amounts as called for in the recipe.
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Print📖 Recipe
Garden Fresh San Marzano Tomato Sauce w/Maccheroni
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 2-3 servings depending on the hunger level
- Diet: Vegan
Description
This simple and rustic San Marzano Italian tomato sauce is not to be underestimated! With just a few quality ingredients you can be enjoying a big bowl of beautiful, sweet, tomatoey pasta with fresh egg maccheroni noodles! And it only takes 30 minutes. Adults and kiddos alike love this pasta and the sauce is so versatile that you can eat it with just about any pasta shape. Pile on the freshly grated cheese, or eat all by its deliciously sweet self! This pasta sauce recipe serves two hungry adults, but feel free to double it to make it for the family or your next vegan dinner party!
Ingredients
- 9 ounces fresh San Marzano plum tomatoes, finely diced (about 4 tomatoes) (250g)
- 4 ounces white or purple onion, finely diced (about 1 medium onion), (115g)
- 2 ½ ounces purple carrot, finely diced (about 1 medium carrot) (70g)
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (26g)
- 2 medium garlic cloves, smashed (9g)
- 6 ounces maccheroni pasta (or other preferred noodles) (160g)
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Instructions
- Blister the garlic. Add the olive oil and garlic to a pot and heat on medium-high cooking the garlic in the oil until it's blistered and fragrant (just a couple of minutes).
- Sauté the onions and carrots. When the garlic is blistered, add the diced onion and carrots, season with salt, and cook until the onions are translucent and have turned a light purple color (if using purple carrots) but not browned.
- Add the tomatoes and finish the sauce. Next, add the diced tomatoes, season with a little more salt, give everything a good stir, place a lid (with no holes) over the top, reduce the sauce to a simmer, cook for approximately 25 minutes. Check the sauce every 5 minutes or so and give it a quick stir, place the lid back on and continue cooking until it's thick and shiny. Turn off the heat while you cook the noodles.
- Cook the pasta. About 5 minutes before the sauce is finished cooking, drop the fresh maccheroni into a pot of lightly salted boiling water and cook for 5 minutes to "al dente" (or as indicated on the package). During the last minute of the pasta cooking time, add about ¼ cup of pasta cooking water to the sauce and stir it around. Taste the sauce and adjust the seasonings if needed. If the sauce is still too thick, add a spoonful of starchy water at a time until it's the perfect consistency.
- Assemble the pasta. As soon as the pasta is cooked through, strain and place the noodles directly into the pasta sauce, turn the heat on and toss everything together, remove from heat and serve immediately and Enjoy!
Notes
- If you don't want tomato skins in your sauce. If you're starting this recipe using whole tomatoes, you may want to blanch them in boiling water for 30 seconds or until the skins start to come loose from the fruit. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, remove the skins and proceed with the recipe. We didn't mind a more rustic take on this tomato sauce with the skins cooked right in. Plus, we needed to use up the already sliced tomatoes from the night before so removing the peels wasn't an option. The pasta sauce is excellent with our without the skins!
- If you don't have purple carrots. Just use regular orange carrots.
- Thin out the sauce using the pasta cooking water. When the pasta noodles are almost finished cooking, add the starchy cooking water to the sauce a little at a time which will help loosen it up. This sauce is a bit on the thicker side because this recipe uses only fresh San Marzano tomatoes and no tomato paste, etc. And San Marzano tomatoes don't have as much juice as canned tomatoes do. Plus, adding starchy water to pasta sauce happens to be a professional technique to make pasta velvety and rich.
- Prep Time: 5 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Category: Pasta
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Italian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: ½
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