🍅 Simple Rustic Tomato Sauce

Tomato sauce and I have a complicated history.

It started with those cheap supermarket bottles, overly acidic, aggressive, and somehow always managing to ruin both a pasta and my stomach at the same time. I loved the idea of tomato sauce, but not what it did to me afterwards. So I did what any stubborn cook does: I started making my own.

Of course, I went too far first. Julia Child’s version, long ingredient lists, multiple pans, a kitchen that looked like a battlefield, and honestly, not enough freshness for something that should taste like summer in a pot.

So I stripped it back.

No fuss. No excess. Just tomatoes, olive oil, salt, and a little balsamic at the end to round everything off. Four ingredients. That’s it.

This is the sauce I now make when tomatoes are cheap and ripe, when I want something honest, rustic, and versatile. It’s the base for my pizzas, pastas, chilaquiles, or whatever else needs a proper tomato foundation.

Make a lot. Freeze it. Use it often. This is the kind of simple that actually tastes like something.