Making Great Marinara Exploration

Original Ingredients (mom):

• 10 ripe roma tomatoes
• 20 fresh basil leaves
• 12 cloves of garlic
• 1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 56oz canned plum tomatoes
• 24oz organic strained tomatoes (no sugar, preferably no salt/citric acid)
• 2-3 teaspoons freeze dried basil
• Pepper
• Salt

Original Recipe (mom):

• Remove core of each tomato and "x" the bottom
• Take basil leaves off stems, put in cold water (to clean)
• Put tomatoes in salted boiling water for 30-60 seconds
• Remove tomatoes when skin is splitting, put in cold water
• Squish tomato over sink to remove skin
• Peel and remove end from garlic, then slice as thin as possible
• Dice tomatoes
• Add 1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil over medium heat, let warm
• Add garlic and keep mixing (sauté)
• Once garlic is translucent/slightly brown, add free tomato and mix
• Add a lot of salt
• Cover and let cook for 5 minutes, medium heat (tomatoes should lose structure)
• Blend fresh canned tomatoes (in can with immersion blender)
• Add in the newly puréed tomatoes
• Add in jarred tomatoes
• Add in more salt and a ton of pepper
• Add in freeze dried basil
• Once fully simmering, start 25-40 minute timer (depending on size)
  • Leave on low-medium heat
  • Top should cover 3/4 of sauce
  • Stir regularly
  • If you want to evaporate water from sauce, remove top after 10 minutes.
  • Done when it's not strong tomato taste. May need to add another 10 minutes.
• Cut basil into strips (julienne)
• Add fresh basil, salt, pepper. Cover.
• Leave basil in sauce for 10 minutes before serving/refrigerating.
• Done!

It all starts with the ingredients, so:

Olive Oil:

• You should think of olive oil as produce (guy from Italy quoted in NYT). It's going to not be as good after 3-4 weeks, so I should buy small quantities regularly rather than a large quantity of especially good stuff.
• It should also be consumed within 2 years of bottling, so you want the newest bottled possible.
• Be liberal with its usage, it seems like it's a lot harder to over olive oil than it is to over salt.
• Decided to up it to 1/2 cup instead of 1/3 and it came out great, based on what I'm reading I may even want to go a lot bigger (maybe up to 1.3 cups for my batch). Can experiment.
• Experimented with a lot more and it's incredible.
• Lloyd Floyd also suggested I try using bacon grease in place of the olive oil one time and it was phenomenal, one of the best sauces I've made.

Canned tomatoes:

• https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/best-canned-tomatoes/
• Mom likes Mutti, made my first batch with them and it came out great.

Pepper:

• Should without a doubt not be on the largest setting. Became overwhelmed with pepper on certain bites, needs to be medium or most fine ground.

Strained tomatoes:

• Used Pomi for first batch and it came out great.

Basil:

• Didn't use freeze dried, just used a whole plant of fresh for first batch. Came out great, but I think the basil taste was barely there/subtle, which could have been better.