That looks delicious!! what’s the secret/recipe to a good sauce?
Thank you so much! This is one of my favorites, and it's always a crowd pleaser. I just finished it!
I absolutely love sauce. When I was looking at going to culinary school, I wanted to be a saucier. I think part of why I never felt like I could call myself a chef is the places I really shined and really made a difference was in sauces and components, which makes my salad and dessert game really strong. I never gravitated towards main courses or big and flashy proteins. I do a lot of quiet work. I live for the "oh, what IS that?" reaction when something tastes really good and I have snuck something unexpected in. It's usually an infused oil or specialty/infused vinegar, but there's infinite ways to do that, too.
So many different things make a good sauce, and that's part of why sauce is so fucking exciting. Balance is key, as well as time, temp, and texture. It's also very important with sauces to see the big picture. What is it going on, how, when, how much. Is it going on something salty, or is it the salt? Sauces can make or break a dish, and I love them so much.
As for what makes a good red sauce, I think the biggest secret is time. It should take a long time, and you should start with whole ingredients if and where you can. I almost always go with canned tomatoes, because who has THAT kind of time when I'm already talking about needed a lot of time, but I get whole tomatoes and I go for unsalted so I control the salt myself as much as I can. I don't use any tomato paste or anything like that, I just let everything cook low and slow for a long time so it all breaks down together and doesn't scorch.
