The Store-Bought Pasta Sauce Ina Garten Recommends

In a time where hand-making everything has become the trend, it can feel like defeat when you opt for pre-made ingredients. There shouldn't be any shame in buying pre-mixed box cakes (which you can easily upgrade), salad dressings, or jarred pasta sauces. Life gets busy and maybe you don't have the extra hour and a half that it takes to make an entire pot of marinara sauce from scratch — dicing tomatoes, chopping garlic, and waiting eons for the mixture to simmer. 

Whether you need to save time or you're looking to save money, pre-made food items can offer convenience without necessarily sacrificing quality. Even the Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten, is no stranger to making good use of store-bought ingredients when the occasion calls for it. She shared on her Ask Ina blog that her favorite jarred sauce is Rao's Marinara Pasta Sauce. As such, she's no stranger to recommending Rao's, praising its authentic taste and quality as a jarred pasta sauce. 

The store-bought sauce has even made appearances in many of her recipes, including her Roasted Vegetable Lasagna, which roasts eggplant, zucchini, and cheese between layers of Rao's Marinara. She often emphasizes that high-quality ingredients, even store-bought ones, can help elevate a dish –- a philosophy that aligns perfectly with Rao's history.

Rao's Homemade Sauce began with Charles Rao, an Italian who immigrated to America in the late 1890s and opened a small tavern in New York City. By the 1960s, Rao's sons, Vincent and Louis, took over the restaurant and began serving classic Italian dishes, racking up quite the reputation in the area for high-quality Italian food. Vincent's nephew on his wife's side eventually became the heart and soul of the Rao's brand, emphasizing the need for pure, simple, high-quality ingredients to elevate the taste of their foods. Rao's Homemade Pasta Sauce wasn't bottled and sold until 1992, when the Rao family refused to add the fillers that are commonly associated with jarred pasta sauces, such as starch, water, sugar, tomato paste, and so on.

Rao's Homemade Pasta Sauce stands out for its commitment to authenticity and simplicity, a quality that makes it a favorite of chefs like Ina Garten. Its ability to deliver a rich, homemade taste without the need for common sauce additives sets it apart from the competition and gives jarred pasta sauce a good name. Rao's brand is what the common folk refer to as "top-shelf" pasta sauce, and with good reason. In the last two decades, Rao's has expanded beyond marinara sauce, now offering an alfredo, tomato basil, and a sausage and mushroom sauce. So, the next time you step into the kitchen ready to make melty stuffed shells or eggplant parmesan in a time crunch, reach for a jar of Rao's –- even Ina Garten will be cheering you on.