How to Make Great Spaghetti Sauce From Scratch

In order to make a really good spaghetti sauce, you’ll need a few simple ingredients and a couple of easy pasta cooking techniques. And while higher quality ingredients will always yield better-tasting pasta, this spaghetti recipe is still delicious even if you can’t splurge on the more expensive imported Italian ingredients. Below are a few helpful tips and techniques to make good homemade spaghetti. 

• Don’t over-salt the pasta cooking water because you’ll add some of this starchy water to the finished spaghetti sauce just before adding the spaghetti noodles and tossing it all together. 
• Add a little starchy pasta cooking water (about 1/4 cup or a little more) to the finished meat sauce which helps the sauce bind better and coat the spaghetti noodles. But avoid adding too much water which will dilute your delicious sauce. 
• Use the best Italian tomato passata you can find. Using one with only 2 to 3 natural ingredients is the best-case scenario. If you’re using a lower-quality tomato passata or canned tomatoes you may find that it tastes very acidic. If this is the case, add a pinch or two of sugar or honey to help balance the acidity and mellow out the flavor. Many cheaper brands of tomatoes contain preservatives, added water, and/or loads of salt. Here in Italy, you mostly find the opposite. Read the labels to know what you’re paying for. Mutti Italian Tomato Passata and Bianco Di Napoli canned tomatoes (produced in California), even Cento San Marzano are all great options.

• Use 100% real Italian or Spanish extra virgin olive oil that’s not mixed with other vegetable oils. If you can’t splurge on olive oil, you can still find decent to good olive oil at places like Trader Joe’s for a great price. No matter where you buy it, be sure to read the label on the back of the bottle because the American market is often flooded with low-quality “olive oil” that’s not really olive oil. Instead, it consists of added soybean oil, sunflower oil, etc. It’s a shame because I think companies are probably betting on a portion of shoppers not really knowing much about real-deal olive oil enough to notice the difference, or even care. Don’t let these companies fool you. Start reading the labels on the back and be a more informed consumer which is healthier for you (and your pocketbook). 
• If you can’t locate bronze-drawn or gold-drawn pasta (sometimes it’s super pricy back home), use De Cecco, Garafolo, Barilla, Voiello, or Molisana which are all good commercial pasta makers. 

The Best Way To Reheat Leftover Spaghetti So It Tastes Just-Made (or almost)

There are generally two different approaches to reheating spaghetti. Here in Italy, leftover spaghetti is not a thing.  For instance, if all of the spaghetti sauce or ragù isn’t expected to be eaten during a particular meal, they won’t combine it all with pasta. Instead, only the amount of pasta needed per person is cooked (usually 80g to 90g per person) and tossed with a couple of ladles of sauce. This way, the remaining sauce can be easily reheated the next day or a couple of days later and combined with freshly boiled pasta. Which means you never have to deal with noodles that become less than “al dente” or too soft.  This is how I prefer to cook and eat pasta. That said…

There’s the “American way” that I grew up with and leftover spaghetti was “a thing”…a really delicious thing that was a time-saver for my Mom. I would eat spaghetti cold or gently reheat it in a skillet with a little oil. Using a skillet or other wide shallow pan to reheat spaghetti allows the noodles to have more direct contact with the heat source which means the dish gets hotter more quickly and doesn’t become too soft and turn to complete mush. Plus, you can get a little “crisp” on the noodles which adds flavor and great texture. 

Of course, you can also reheat spaghetti in a microwave for up to 1 minute, but I’m not saying I recommend this♡.