Ina Garten's Hot Tip To Wake Up Bland Vodka Sauce

You really only need a few key ingredients to make a basic vodka sauce: canned tomatoes, minced garlic, diced onions, heavy cream, unsalted butter, parmesan cheese, a little salt and pepper to taste, and of course, vodka. Add it to the pasta of your choice and you can have a classic, delicious dish to enjoy in about 20 minutes. Legendary chef and author Ina Garten has a genius way to elevate vodka sauce without any additional ingredients. All you need is more time in the kitchen, a Dutch oven cooking pot, and a hot oven.

Sauté the onions, garlic, and canned tomatoes in the Dutch oven and then let them simmer with the vodka for five to seven minutes or until the mixture has reduced by about half. Garten's secret to extra flavorful sauce is to place the entire Dutch oven into the oven with the lid on at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 90 minutes to really let those flavors combine. Once that's done, she suggests popping the mixture into a food processor to smooth it out before adding it back into the Dutch oven with cream and the rest of the ingredients. Your final product should be a rich, creamy sauce that has an incredible depth of flavor you wouldn't have gotten without the long roast in the oven. 

If you're thinking you might not have time to let your vodka sauce simmer for 90 minutes in the oven, there are other ways to change things up. If you don't have canned tomatoes or tomato paste but you're really craving vodka sauce, you could use a canned marinara sauce. Perhaps you're looking to make a healthier version of the dish. In that case, you can swap out the heavy cream with something like non-fat half and half or coconut milk (if you want to skip the dairy). 

Maybe you don't have vodka laying around (even though Garten herself has said she keeps vodka in her freezer at all times) or you want to make the vodka sauce without it, like Gigi Hadid famously did in 2020. There are other alcoholic substitutes (like gin or wine) and non-alcoholic options (like chicken stock or lemon water) that will work just fine.

One thing is for certain: Don't dump all your pasta water down the sink! Instead, keep 1 or 2 cups of the helpful liquid for the final product. You can use it in any sauce you're making for a nice, silky coating on pasta, including a cacio e pepe, which turns out, is a deceptively difficult dish to master.