Jasdip, Linda posts on Facebook so I can ask her to come over if you like.

Hi Peppi. She can, if she wants, but otherwise, just tell her that it's a keeper for us.

Here's the recipe.

This one has become a favorite in our house. Super easy and full of flavor.

Basic Marinara
Source: Cooking Light October 2007

3T olive oil
3 c chopped onion
1T sugar
3T minced garlic (about 6 cloves)
2 tsp salt
2 tsp dried basil
1-1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp fennel seeds, crushed
2T balsamic vinegar
2 c chicken broth
3 28oz cans crushed tomatoes

Heat oil in large stockpot over medium heat. Add onion, cook 4 minutes stirring frequently. Add sugar and next 7 ingredients (through fennel), cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Stir in vinegar, cook 30 seconds. Add broth and tomatoes, bring to a simmer. Cook over low heat 50-60 minutes until thickened, stirring occasionally.

Yield: about 12 cups sauce

Linda

I want to give this a try. I've seen recipes where chicken stock or cubes are added to marinara and pizza sauces.

You can substitute stock for water in all kinds of recipes. Salt free or low salt is best for this, so it can concentrate without making your food too salty. Use it for everything from cooking rice, to making sauces. The cubes are another story. I'm guessing it probably started during the privation after WWII, but "the Italian mama's trick" for just about everything is bouillon cubes, whether it's soup, pizza or a sauté or just about anything else. It's basically a lot of salt and MSG. So long as you're aware that that's the purpose of adding it, go for it. You can get low sodium/no MSG bouillon cubes, and they will impart the stock flavor, but they won't do that "magic" thing, because that's the MSG. There are some soup bases that are expensive that are boiled down to thick and luscious, which may be creating their own MSG, or the other chemicals that prompt the umami reaction.

Actually boullion cubes are the US's answer to Boveril....been around since the dark ages. Years and years ago it would be used to make a "tea" to feed to picky eater kids and sick people.
Don't remember just when boullion cubes came into the picture, but it was long before they marketed MSG.
My marinara sauce is much like Canoe Linda's...but I add a can of contatina tomato paste, no thyme and a good amount of parsley...dreied or fresh. And sometimes a bit of lemon juice if the tomatoes are sweet and the balsamic sweet as well.

Mine is similar also (made some last night), but I use Chianti instead of Balsamic vinegar, and I add a bit of tomato powder if it is not thick enough. Mine included sauteed mushrooms, but that's partly because I wanted to use it with leftover mushroom (turkey) meatloaf. I make the ground turkey meatloaf specifically so that I can have meatloaf one meal than then use leftover meatloaf in pasta sauce. We had it with penne pasta yesterday, and I'm making lasagna today, as now I have leftover pasta sauce.

Linda, I wasn't talking about the invention of bouillon cubes, but about why Italian mamas are known for putting them in everything. MSG as an additive was first highly used in the U.S. in the 1940's. They were starting to develop it in Europe well before that. There may have been bouillon cubes before they were loaded with MSG, but it's hard to find them that aren't nowadays, even at places like Whole Foods. I know they used to feed bouillon to sick people, or "beef tea" but I didn't know they used cubes for that. interesting.

Lars, the chianti in the marinara sounds great!

Jasdip (& Linda) - Thank you for posting this sauce recipe! I tried it and LOVE it.

I reduced the salt to 1 tsp. I did not have fennel seeds, so will need to get some for next time. I may add one more T of sugar next time, too.

I put half of the sauce in the freezer & hopefully it will taste just as good in a few weeks when I thaw it out.

This recipe is going to be one that I'll use on a regular basis. Thank you, again!

Good recipe. I made it for dinner yesterday. Omitted the thyme and increased the fennel. Doubled the sugar. Added dried parsley. Towards the end of the simmer, I added 1# of browned Italian sausage. Served over spaghetti for DH, DS opted for whole wheat penne and zucchini noodles for myself. Still have quite a lot of sauce left so will freeze the remainder, or, perhaps use part of it for pizza tomorrow and then freeze.

LOL cilantro......so basically a totally different recipe...I do it all the time !!

Heck, I didn't wander nearly so far astray as I usually do!

I totally get the comment, but some things, like tomato sauces, just don't change that much when you change them, and the recipes are generally just outlines. A couple of weeks ago, I cleaned the refrigerator into a big pot of spaghetti sauce. The proportions were totally different from my usual. More meat and onions, less tomato, no garlic or bay, plus whatever veg wasn't past saving. There was even a little matzah in there. For my sauce to taste "right" there has to be at least one green bell pepper and there was exactly one. There were also kale, beets, other roots, yellow squash (which cooks differently from the zucchini I usually use), and lots of thyme. It tastes like my standard spaghetti sauce. Slightly different, but not much.

Yes, Plllog. The tomato flavor is so assertive that changes to herbs are just nuance, IMO. I omitted the thyme because thyme, to me, is a cold weather herb and the day I made it, the temp was in the 80's. I like fennel a lot, so I increased that. Tossed the parsley in because I have a lot of it and will soon be harvesting fresh parsley to dry. Added a bit more sugar because I like the 'sweet'. Added the sausage because spaghetti was the entire meal and thought the meal needed some protein.

What was new to the way I usually make marinara was the addition of chkn broth, balsamic vinegar and using just crushed tomatoes. (I had 3 cans crushed toms on the shelf that were edging past their use-by date.) I usually use home canned tomatoes, tomato paste, Marmite and a good glug of a hearty red wine So, the recipe was a new approach (for me) to marinara. I liked it...esp., I think, the crushed tomatoes. Saves a lot of time in reducing the sauce and will probably change how I process a lot of my home grown toms in the future.