Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipe

Tomorrow marks 6 weeks to go in my pregnancy so this past weekend I got really serious about preparing freezer meals to have on hand for just before and after the baby arrives. On Saturday my big project was to make a HUGE pot of my homemade pasta sauce. I decided I'd also like to share my recipe with you:


Basic Vegetarian Pasta Sauce

1Tbsp olive oil
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 onion - chopped
14oz can diced tomatoes
6oz tomato paste
3/4 cup veggie broth or water (I prefer broth)
1Tbsp Italian seasonings

Update: A friend suggested I add some balsamic vinaigrette as well. I'll try it and report back how much I used. 

*optional: whatever fresh vegetables you have in the fridge, chopped. I like peppers and zucchini in particular.

Sautee the garlic and onion in a medium pot until the onion is a bit transparent. Add everything else in, bring to a boil then reduce heat to low and simmer covered for at least 15 minutes. The longer you simmer, the better the flavors will blend. I've simmered for a couple of hours.

And now for some pictures from Saturday. I think these pictures represent around 6 times the regular recipe plus I added in 2 medium zucchini, 2 large (ok, huge) yellow peppers and 2 cans of sliced black olives. 


First I made the basic sauce recipe then I cut up the fresh veggies and added them:

I stirred them in and let it simmer:

And when I say I let it simmer, I mean I let it simmer for HOURS . . . I think in the end it was on the stovetop for around 8 hours. The house smelled amazing and the flavors really blended well.

I'll be using this sauce in some lasagnas I plan to assemble (going to try my hand at homemade ricotta cheese this week too) as well as freeze it in family-sized servings to be served over our favorite boxed pasta.

Stay tuned for more recipes as I share tales from my freezer stock up mission.

Thank you for reading,
Julie