Imagine coming home from work and the aroma in the house is delicious Marinara Sauce. It cooked itself while you were gone! This is a meatless red sauce to enjoy over pasta or as a dipping sauce for calzones or breadsticks! You will love this. It’s so simple and so good, you’ll never want to buy marinara sauce in a jar ever again!
Your crock pot can be your best friend. You literally open up a couple of cans and dice an onion. Toss in the rest of the ingredients, put the lid on and set your cooker to low heat. When you walk in the door, your house will smell like Italy!
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 – 15 oz. can crushed tomatoes
1 – 15 oz. can diced, Italian style tomatoes
2 T. tomato paste
1/2 medium onion,diced (blanch the diced onion using 1/2 c. water in the microwave – see instructions below)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 t. dried oregano
1 t. dried basil
1 t. brown sugar
1 t. balsamic vinegar
1/2 c. hot water
salt and pepper to taste
*To blanch the onion in the microwave, put the diced onion pieces in a small microwave safe dish and add 1/2 c. water. Microwave 2 minutes on high. The onion will start to cook and break down slightly. Don’t toss out the water that you blanched it in! This has lots of flavor! Add the to the rest of the ingredients in the crock pot.
Cook 6-8 hours on LOW heat. You may want to check the sauce after about 4 hours. Add more hot water if it seems to thick. (If it gets too thick, it will stick and burn on the sides of the crock pot.)
Serve hot with breadsticks, calzones or over pasta for a meatless dish.
If you’re going to be serving a crowd, HERE is a great restaurant secret for serving pasta to a crowd!
Do you know if its possible to freeze this sauce?
Good question Kelly! Yes! It freezes beautifully! I would plan to use it within a couple of months or so.
Can you can this?
It may be possible if you used a pressure canner. There are some definite guidelines to follow when canning different things in a pressure canner. I am not sure if there is enough acid in THIS recipe to be safely stored on the shelf using the water bath method. Does your state have an extension service? They are usually able to tell you the answers regarding safe home canning and preserving. It is important that it is done properly, so I would check with them first.
Can you add meat to this?
Yes you could. You could either brown some ground beef (and maybe some italian sausage too!) and put it in the crockpot with the other ingredients while it cooks, or let the sauce cook and then toss the cooked meat in at the end. Yum!
Looks great! We are in need to serve 12 people—approximately how many servings does this recipe make? Not sure if we’ll need to set up 2 crockpots or if we can do it in one. Please let me know what you think, thanks!
This recipe should serve about 5-6 small servings. You can double or triple it as needed. If you have a really large crock pot, a double or triple batch should work just fine.
I AM MAKING THIS RIGHT NOW, WONDER HOW IT WOULD TASTE WITH FIG INFUSED BALSAMIC VINEGER?? SHOULD I TRY THIS OR NOT?? I WANT TO PUT THIS SAUCE ON NAAN FLAT BREAD FOR PIZZAS.
Oh my gosh! That would be amazing!
This sounds delicious! Can’t wait to try it.