I wanted to make my own red sauce because the no-oil red sauce I found was so expensive to buy. This recipe is easy, delicious and cheap to make.
Marinara
3 cups water
12 oz. tomato paste
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes(Trader Joes sells just dry sun-dried tomatoes-no oil)
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
1 Tbsp dried basil
1 Tbsp dried oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground black pepper
Blend all the ingredients in a blender. Place blended ingredients into the Instant Pot. Using an instant Pot here saves incredible amounts of time, I'm talking minutes instead of hours cooking down. Lock down the Instant Pot. Set for 10 minutes on high pressure. The marinara tastes wonderfully and is really cheap to make. If you double the recipe, only cook half the red sauce in the Instant Pot at a time.(If you have a 6 quart Instant Pot).
I had a Sicilian boss once and he had the most incredible spaghetti sauce recipe but of course it had Italian hot sausage in the recipe. Well I kept the recipe and replaced the sausage with mushrooms!!!!
Sicilian Spaghetti sauce
3 28 oz cans of tomatoes, whole or diced
2 6 oz cans of tomato paste
2 6 oz cans of water
two large onions, chopped
3 lbs of mushrooms, chopped
An entire head of garlic, or more, minced(you can never have enough garlic:))
3 Tbsp of oregano
3 Tbsp of basil
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 Tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp salt(or leave out if tomatoes are salted)
optional:
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
Saute the onions and mushrooms first in a big pan because we are going to put all the ingredients into this sauce pan, and saute until the there is no water in the pan(when you cook the onions and mushrooms and garlic without oil or veggie broth and just use the heat of the pan to cook them, in the beginning you will see a ton of water that bleeds from the onions and mushrooms-cook them until there is no water left then add the minced garlic until it becomes fragrant). A good half hour I cook mine on low heat. (start the pan out hot then turn the pan to medium low or really low to cook them).
Once the mushrooms/onion/garlic mixture is done, add the 3 cans of tomatoes(use whole or diced but not all crushed(I used all crushed and 4 cans of tomato paste and my sauce was cloying and thick like paste-I have made this sauce hundreds of times and that had never happened-I must not have ever used all crushed tomatoes), the tomato paste, the water, the basil and oregano , the pepper and salt if you need it(I used salted tomatoes so I didn't need to add more salt). Stir the mixture well to incorporate all spices Get the mixture hot, and then turn down to simmer and allow all the seasonings to meld with the tomatoes. After the sauce has cooked down some, add the nutritional yeast and stir it into the sauce well until well incorporated. Cook for another hour and allow the sauce to continue to cook down and thicken. When the sauce is as thick as you like, taste and season accordingly.