Easy Homemade Marinara Sauce

We always have bags of marinara sauce on hand in the freezer, because it's so much tastier (and cheaper!) than the store bought jars. Also, I'm half Italian so the homemade stuff is a 'must' in our household. It can be used for chicken parm, lasagna, bucatini all'amatriciana, or any other Italian dish! I often make 4x this recipe at once to save time in the future. You can freeze this by the bag full and save for many months.

I like to de-seed my tomatoes, but it will add time to what is otherwise a super simple recipe. The seeds are bitter in my opinion (but there's a lot of debate on this issue!), but it's up to you and even if you decide to keep the seeds it will be better than the store bought jars.

Prep time: 10min (or 20min if de-seeding the tomatoes)
Cook time: 30 min
Yields: ~3 cups

Ingredients:

• 1 28 oz. can of San Marzano tomatoes
• 4 tbsp. of cold-pressed olive oil OR grass-fed butter OR ghee
• 6 garlic cloves peeled and sliced thin
• 1 tsp of red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 large basil sprig

Instructions:

1. If you are de-seeding the tomatoes, open the jar of tomatoes and over the sink, take out each tomato and remove the seeds using your fingers .  See a great video here for another trick on how to do this!
2. Put the tomatoes in a medium bowl, and break up the tomatoes with your hands
3. Pour 1/4 of water into the can of tomatoes to get the remaining tomato juices. Reserve for later
4. In a large saute pan, heat the olive until hot over medium heat. Add the garlic, salt and red pepper flakes
5. Cook the garlic until fragrant but not brown
6. Add the tomatoes followed by the reserve tomato juice. Stir until combined
7. Add the sprig of basil to the surface of the sauce
8. Simmer the sauce until thickened, for about 15-20 minutes
9. Remove thebasil sprig
10. Serve and enjoy!