How to prepare the perfect sauce: the secrets of Italian chefs
Italian cuisine is famous all over the world for its delicious and tasty pastas dishes
One of the secrets to an excellent pasta is combining it with the perfect sauce. Over the centuries, Italian chefs have developed techniques and recipes to create sauces that are rich in flavour, capable of enhancing the taste of the pasta.
In this article, we will explore the secrets of Italian chefs for making the perfect sauce, using both fresh tomatoes and Pomì tomato passata. We will also discover the fail-safe trick to make excellent pasta with tomato sauce and how to combine these ingredients with mussels, one of the seafoods par excellence.
The tomato: a fundamental ingredient for every kitchen
Tomatoes are actually an essential ingredient in Italian cuisine, and in a healthy and balanced diet they help to provide a proper supply of vitamins, fibres and antioxidants. Using the classic Pomì passata, you can obtain nutritious sauces rich in flavour, which allow you to create healthy and balanced dishes.
Choosing tomatoes
Choosing a high-quality product is the fundamental step in being able to make an excellent sauce. Ripe tomatoes, for example, have a sweet, intense flavour that carries over into the sauce. There are basically three alternatives for making a tomato-based sauce: using peeled tomatoes, passata or pulp.
The pulp and peeled tomatoes can, in some cases, have similar end results: both are in fact ideal for a rustic and thick sauce. Choosing tomato passata, however, gives you a smoother and more delicate sauce, perfect for fresh pasta or to enrich preparations such as lasagne or stews.
Pomì products include the different varieties of tomatoes and are kept as fresh as if they had just been picked, bringing to the table all the goodness of Italian fruits, cultivated and grown in the heart of the Po Valley, located in the centre of Emilia-Romagna. Tradition is guaranteed both by the sustainable and environmentally friendly working methods of the Pomì supply chain, and by the geographical origin of the tomatoes. In fact, the Emilia-Romagna region was also listed by Forbes in this article as a global heritage site for gastronomy.
How do you prepare a home-made sauce?
To make the perfect sauce, start by adding olive oil to a frying pan and sauté the garlic over a medium-low heat until golden brown. Add the Pomì tomato passata and cook for a few minutes, mashing the tomatoes gently with a fork. This will help create a textured base for the sauce.
Add the vegetables you like, such as finely chopped onion, carrot and celery, to give the sauce an aromatic note. You can also enhance the sauce with herbs such as basil, oregano, parsley or rosemary to intensify the flavour, choosing them based on your personal preferences.
If you want to further enhance your sauce, when including it in a fish-based recipe, an Italian chef's trick is to add fresh mussels. Make sure you clean them well and remove any that are already open before adding them to the sauce. The mussels will create a delicious flavour and give the sauce an interesting texture: in fact, you also have the option of blending part of them and adding this straight into the sauce.
The importance of the environment in Italian cuisine
Italian chefs attach great importance to the origin and freshness of their ingredients. Tomatoes grown in natural environments, such as the sun-kissed fields of the Po Valley, stand out due to their unmistakable flavour and velvety texture.
Italian cuisine values the seasonality of ingredients, preferring fresh ones that are in-season. In fact, ripe tomatoes, when picked at the right time, have an unmistakable flavour and make the sauce even tastier. The Pomì supply chain is extremely attentive to environmental sustainability and the quality of the tomato fruits that are the basis for each of our products, which are kept exactly as they were freshly picked.
What can you add to a tomato passata?
The classic Pomì passata is an exquisite and versatile ingredient, perfect for making tasty Mediterranean recipes. Its characteristic flavour and unmistakable aroma make it the undisputed star of your kitchen. Here are some suggestions for combinations with tomato passata, to create pasta dishes with a typically Italian flavour:
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Courgette sauce: tasty, creamy and simple to make. Highly recommended with tomato gnocchi!
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Prawn sauce: tomato and shellfish together for a captivating flavour.
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Asparagus and pea sauce: make your pasta creamy and tasty with an asparagus and pea sauce.
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Pizza sauce: garlic, oregano and tomato passata: get ready to season your gnocchi!
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Broccoli sauce: the perfect sauce for fusilli, it combines the sweet taste of broccoli with tomato.
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Vegetable sauce: experiment with vegetables by combining their flavours with tomato.
