Pater Familias … because I'm your FATHER!

Easy Upgrades For Storebought Red Sauce

May 12, 2010

Know tricks and tweaks for doctoring readymade stuff?

Killer Fix Takes Jar Flavor, Feel Out Of Sauce From Jar

Stuff for kids need not be kids stuff.

Said it before while telling you to cut out half the sugar called-for in dessert recipes (see Killer Cake post). And the concept extends way beyond food. Picking vacations, day trips and other diversions, shopping, Minerva and I always try to find the sweet spot, where both seven-year-old Girl Child and her grownups have lots to like.  

But we're back to multi-generational cuisine -- pseudocuisine, actually, because the basic item in question comes from a food factory. Talking premade red sauce, available in 24-ounce glass jars at any old supermarket. Stuff is ready to pour on pasta right out of the jar, but it fails to engage the grownups in this house, particularly Minerva who sets our bar standards-wise and will not eat what she doesn’t actually like. To render the sauce acceptable, I have to doll it up so it’s homemadelike, or at least close enough for weeknights. Given my end-of-day energy crash – you get that, too? – on top of homework crunch and the kid’s wind-down and critical hunger, whatever I do has to be pretty damn quick and easy. Pater’s pasta sauce fix is both.

Basic premise is a pretty obvious: You bulk up the stuff, flavor it up, with fresh add-ins. Typically we work with the following…

• One 24-ounce jar of sauce with simple flavoring, like plain marinara or tomato-basil. Good to buy up at least a little, say Newman’s Own instead of Ragu. 
• One pound of ground beef
• One pound of mushrooms, sliced
• One medium or small yellow onion clove of garlic
• One cup sliced celery
• Oregano

Cooking - 

• Sizzle beef in pan over burner set medium high, until you have brown crumbles
• In oiled pan sauté until brown garlic, onions, and mushrooms. Add celery late in operation so it’s cooked but not brown.
• Combine A) and B) in pan, pour on pasta sauce.
• Add 1 tbsp oregano, simmer.

Now it's better than out-of-the jar but nothing braggable. You take it to the next level by adding, tah-dah! the secret killer-app ingredient, withheld to this point for emphasis and cheap drama -  

• 1 cup red wine

Hit it with biggest, driest, reddest you have on hand. Cab, chianti, or so. Simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve over high-end pasta, but in some entertaining, kid-friendly shape, with grated for-real peccorino romano or parmesan.

Can't altogether explain how, but the wine just takes the jar out of the sauce. The tartness snaps it up, defeats any commercial sweetness, cuts through the mouth-coating uck of stuff engineered to sit forever on supermarket shelves. It ain't brand-name any more, it's yours. And you are a kitchen stove hero.

I was just last night, both females loving their dinner, GC oblivious to eating some of her daily dosage of veggies.  This is what I cook for. 

Now you tell. What's your favorite fix, to get store taste out of storefood? 

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