7 tips for making the best marinara sauce that you'll ever eat

If up until this point you've been satisfied with buying marinara sauce in a can or jar, stop right now. Not only are those prepared sauces full of all kinds of chemicals you don't really need and that can actually be harmful to your health, but they also don't even come close to tasting as good as homemade marinara.

When you use homemade sauce to dress pasta, you can instantly taste the difference. It just tastes fresher, and all of those flavors are so much livelier than they are in any jar you'll find. Things can go wrong, from having a runny sauce to one that just doesn't taste as good as it could, but those pitfalls can be avoided. Follow these seven tips, and you'll have sauce so delicious you'll never buy it from a store again.

1. Saute vegetables first

Marinara sauce is actually best when it contains very few vegetables. Onion and garlic are really all that's needed. If you add any others (some put things such as celery and carrots into their marinara sauce), they can overwhelm the sweet taste of the tomatoes.

But if you just add diced onions and minced garlic to the sauce, you won't bring out the full flavor of them either. Instead, start any marinara sauce by heating up a tablespoon of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for about three minutes, just until they are translucent. Add the garlic, stir and cook for another 30 seconds before adding other ingredients.

Doing this will get the vegetables to start sweating, which means they start to release their flavor and become very aromatic.

2. Use canned tomatoes
So in all this effort to get a fresh-tasting sauce, why should you use canned tomatoes? For starters, fresh tomatoes are only going to bring the fresh taste you're after when they're in peak season, which is only about two months of the year for those who live in colder climates. Canned tomatoes, on the other hand, are canned when they're fully ripe in peak season and they hold onto all that flavor until you're ready to use them.

When choosing canned tomatoes, opt for whole canned tomatoes. Unlike diced tomatoes, whole tomatoes have only been processed once. And don't choose any canned tomatoes already seasoned with herbs and spices. The sauce will taste much better if you add these yourself.

You can add the whole tomatoes once the onion and garlic have been cooked slightly. And remember to add the juices from the can, too. Although it will take longer for the water to evaporate, making the sauce take longer to cook, those delicious juices will reduce, meaning the flavors will concentrate and the marinara sauce will taste even more like fresh tomatoes.

3. Add wine

Wine is essential to any good marinara sauce. Although it won't make the sauce taste boozy, it can give it a complexity you just won't get any other way. After the tomatoes have been added to the pot, add about 1/2 cup of wine. It doesn't really matter if you use red or white wine, so go with whatever one you like best.

4. Add olive oil
All Italians add a little bit of olive oil to their marinara sauce. It gives the sauce a little more body and adds more flavor. Use a high-quality oil. You don't want the sauce to be greasy, though, so be careful not to add too much; a couple of tablespoons will be plenty.

5. Use dried herbs
Again, dried herbs in fresh marinara sauce? Yes, but not too many of them. Adding dried basil, oregano, thyme and even rosemary will bring a lot of flavor to the sauce right from the beginning. You should add in fresh herbs too (more on this later) but dried herbs should be added at the same time the tomatoes, wine and olive oil go in.

6. Add sugar and salt
Whether you like a sweet marinara sauce or one that's a little on the spicier side, sugar is a must in any marinara sauce. Sugar cuts the acidity of the tomatoes in marinara sauce, which will make the sauce smoother and more palatable.

In addition to sugar, you cannot forget to add salt, a generous amount of it. Start by putting in one teaspoon and taste the sauce as you go. As it cooks the flavors will reduce, including the saltiness, and you want to make sure you're not adding too much. But because two or three cans of tomatoes are typically used, along with all the other ingredients, you will probably end up using more salt than that initial teaspoon.

7. Incorporate fresh herbs at the end

So now we get to the fresh herbs. And yes, marinara sauce desperately needs them. But if you add them at the beginning of cook time, they'll lose all their flavor and may even turn black. When the sauce has just 10 minutes or so left to cook, add chopped basil, parsley, oregano, thyme and any other herb you wish to include. This is the best way to get fresh-tasting marinara sauce and show off that it truly is homemade.