Is Homemade Tomato Sauce Worth the Effort?

bon appétit magazine

by Elizabeth Gunnison,

Bon Appétit

In our columnFake It or Make Itwe test a homemade dish against its prepackaged counterpart to find out what's really worth cooking from scratch.

Authentic, flavor-packed marinara starts with an elderly Italian woman puttering around her kitchen as something simmers away on the stove, and ends with your attempt to recreate that scenario. Right? That imagery has driven me, at least, to avoid pre-made sauces assiduously over the years. Anyone reading this website surely believes that marinara should be made by hand, and that any cook worth her salt would never, ever look to a jarred, mass-market substitute. But given the conceit of this column (and that most homemade tomato sauces use canned tomatoes as a base with the simple additions of onions), I set out to determine whether my kitchen time is being misspent conjuring Nonnas.

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The Contenders Barilla's Traditional Marinara Sauce vs. Nancy Silverton's Basic Tomato Sauce
Marinara is a simple sauce made with tomatoes, garlic, herbs, onions, and olive oil. It originated in Naples late in the late 1600's, after tomatoes were introduced to Italy from the New World in the 16th Century, but it wasn't regularly used as a dressing for pasta until a century later. Alla marinara means "in the style of a mariner," which may refer to the sauce's usefulness on lengthy sea voyages thanks to its considerable shelf life. Today marinara is used primarily on pastas as well as pizza, as a simple, quick sauce or a building block for more involved fare with the addition of meat, seafood, or vegetables.

Relative Costs About the same. I paid $3.49 for a 12-ounce jar of the Barilla, which works out to 29 cents an ounce. Ingredients for the homemade totaled $11 for a five -cup batch, or 27 cents per ounce.
Relative Healthfulness Slight advantage to homemade. Both tomato sauces have tomato as their main ingredient (thankfully, right?) and contain onion, carrot, olive oil, and spices. However, the Barilla is saltier than the homemade, containing 20 percent of your recommended daily sodium intake.
Time Commitment It took me an hour and twenty minutes to make tomato sauce from scratch.
Leftovers Potential Significant. Either sauce is good for several days in the refrigerator, and both can be frozen for months with no real loss of quality.

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What The Testers Said First, let me introduce our panel.
THE HEALTH NUT A delicate eater, the health nut is calorie conscious but also likes to eat well
THE FOODIE Calorie agnostic, our foodie judge has a sophisticated palate and a love of cooking
THE DUDE Ambivalent toward food trends and health concerns, this guy just wants to be fed when he's hungry
THE KID Between ages of 9 and 12 years old, not jaded, typically not into strong flavors
Testers sampled both sauces blind, alone and on pasta. Most people had difficulty discerning which sauce was made from scratch. At the end of the evening, only the store-bought sauce had been finished.
The Health Nut: Homemade; "This sauce has a more pronounced olive oil flavor, which I love, and it's a lot less salty."
The Foodie: Store-bought; "I love the way this sauce coats the pasta. It really clings, and delivers a nice, bold tomato flavor too."
The Kid: Store-bought; "The other one is kind of watery."
The Dude: Store-bought; "I like to tomato flavor better in this sauce, it's almost like it's more concentrated."

The Verdict Fake it.
We CAN'T BELIEVE this is how it went down, but for the most part, our testers loved the rich tomato flavor and thick, clingy texture of the store-bought sauce more than the homemade. We'll probably never stop making all of our pasta sauces by hand, because hey, we love to cook. But in a pinch, it's interesting to know our taste testers preferences. And given the relatively wholesome ingredients in the Barilla version, you can save your stove time for more involved sauces like Bolognese, Puttanesca, or Amatriciana.

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