Why Pasta Sauce Is So Much Better After Slow-Simmering

I learned to make spaghetti sauce from my great aunt Rosie, a first-generation Italian-American whose parents immigrated from Basilicata. One thing she taught me was, the stuff needs to simmer all day — preferably flavored with pork neck bones, which would then be served on the side. Another important tenet of the Aunt Rosie School of Pasta was: No sugar in the sauce, ever. (Never have, never will.) Well, as it turns out, these two things go together. 

Matthew Cutolo (matthewcutolo), like me, is a third-generation Italian-American and works in a food-related field, although he's got more serious Italian cuisine cred since he's a chef at Gargiulo's Restaurant on Coney Island while I just write about the stuff. According to him, "A long simmer for a tomato sauce, like a Sunday sauce, helps reduce acidity, lets the flavors meld together, and concentrates the tomato's natural sweetness."

So how long should you simmer your sauce? "It all depends on the sauce and what you're trying to achieve," Cutolo told The Takeout. The aforementioned Sunday gravy might take anywhere from one-and-a-half to three hours, while something like a Bolognese or Neapolitan ragu might take three or more hours. This longer cooking time for these meatier sauces, he explained, "allows flavors to meld, breaks down the meats until they're tender, and results in a rich, complex sauce."

The recipes mentioned by chef Matthew Cutolo are typically made with canned tomatoes for a more consistently ripe flavor and smoother sauce. (No, they don't necessarily need to be San Marzanos, whether real or impostors. My Great Aunt Rosie never heard of them and wouldn't have spent the big bucks on some fancy schmancy brand if she had.) Fresh, small tomatoes, like cherry or grape ones, can be used to make a quick pasta sauce like the baked feta pasta of viral TikTok fame or our pasta with blistered tomatoes and egg yolk. And vodka cream pasta, too, can also be made in a hurry since even though it uses canned tomatoes, much of the flavor comes from cream and vodka. You don't want to overcook either of these ingredients, since the first might curdle and the second evaporate.

Other quick pasta sauces are entirely tomato-free, like aglio e olio (my mom's specialty, this translates to "garlic and oil"), or cacio e pepe (which has been so trendy of late that we all now know the name means "cheese and pepper"). A jar of pesto, too, can be used as a super-quick pasta sauce, while a cream-based sauce such as alfredo must, out of necessity, cook pretty quickly. As we mentioned above, cream curdles when it cooks too long or at too high a heat. This is because once enough of the water evaporates, the fat in the cream is no longer held in suspension, and instead forms unsightly lumps in the sauce.