Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Here's an easy-to-make pasta sauce that's healthier, cheaper and better-tasting than anything you can buy in the grocery store.

It's low in sodium, it's vegetarian, and the roasted red peppers give the sauce an interesting depth of flavor you won't find in regular old tomato sauce.

Best of all, you can make this recipe in 25 minutes flat, and you'll have enough sauce to equal three jars of the store-bought stuff. I love recipes like this. It's almost unfair that a sauce this good can be this easy to make.

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Pasta with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Ingredients:
4-5 Tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried basil
1 teaspoon black pepper (more or less to taste)

2 28-ounce cans whole peeled tomatoes, chopped coarsely
12-14 ounce can roasted red peppers, chopped
2 cups water

Directions:
1) Heat oil in a large non-stick pan, then add onions, garlic and spices. Saute on medium heat for about five minutes. Add tomatoes, roasted red peppers and water. Bring to a boil, turn heat down to medium low and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.

2) Puree roughly 3/4 of the sauce in a blender or a food processor. Add back to the pan and simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve over the pasta of your choice.

Makes about 2 1/2 quarts of sauce (about 80 ounces by volume).

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Pasta Puttanesca
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How to Modify a Recipe: The Six Rules

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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

After having a great roasted red pepper sauce in a restaurant a few years ago, I experimented at home and came up with one that takes less than 5 minutes and tastes great! In the restaurant the sauce was served over pasta and grilled shrimp.

I just emptied a jar of roasted peppers into the food processor and added a sliced jalapeno pepper (without seeds), then pureed them together.

Of course, adding some onion and garlic would be good, too, but I wouldn't use the tomatoes, as they would dilute the pepper flavor.

Daniel said...

Hi Margaret, I really like your variation here, thank you for sharing it!

DK

Thomas Pluck said...

Great recipe! So simple. Most marinara sauces use carrot to sweeten it and cut the tomato acidity, but roasted peppers sound even better. If you have time to kill, roasting your own red peppers in the broiler or even on a gas stove top is easy.

PS: You need to add a digg! button to your posts. Email me if you need help, but it makes sharing your site a lot easier.

Daniel said...

Thanks for your comment TS! And yes, you're right, I really should configure the digg/delicious/stumble links I have on each post so they take you right to the posting page on each site. It's on my list of things to do for sure.

Thanks for reading!

DK

Djon Ma said...

Wouldn't it be cheaper to roast the red peppers yourself? And you can spice them as required whilst roasting - or marinade them in spiced oil before roasting, making them even tastier.

Also if you have a pressure canner, not only can you bulk make the sauce and have it available whenever you want it, but you could do a batch of roasted peppers to your own taste as well, and can those.

Daniel said...

Hi Djon Ma, thanks for stopping by. Yes, it most likely would be cheaper, but because it adds a fair amount of extra steps and labor, I didn't recommend doing so. This recipe is designed more to be really easy and quick. However, if you are interested in roasting your own red peppers, go right ahead!

Thanks for your comment.

DK

HAPPY IN NEVADA said...

I've made my pasta sauce like this for ages; plus I grate two carrots up in the food processor (or roast them; cool, and blend for an even better flavor), so my tomato sauce acctually has tomatoes; roasted red peppers; a couple roasted carrots for a bit of sweetness, and 1/2 cup of home-made applesauce that adds another layer of sweetness without changing the dominate tomato flavor; boosted by the peppers.....

I like getting as much nutrition into the sauce as possible, so this works great!

HAPPY IN NEVADA said...

Whoops - typo' - should read 'actually' - sorry......

Anna said...

Guess what I made for dinner tonight! My little tweaks were to use 1 can of tomatoes and 2 jars of red peppers so there would be lots of pepper flavor, and I left out the water. I only simmered it as long as it took the pasta to cook. Quite good and much less time consuming than my regular spaghetti sauce (I make big batches of it to freeze and don't mind the work since it makes enough sauce for about 10 dinners). We really liked the pepper flavor. The sauce was so red! Much redder than regular tomato sauce. Thanks for sharing!

Daniel said...

Anna, I'm so glad you got such great results with this recipe! Thanks for the feedback.

DK