Simple Tomato Sauce

This, for me, is The Sauce. It's surprisingly cheap. It's elegantly simple. It's incredibly tasty. It requires only slightly more effort than opening a jar. You'll never want to pour Ragu on your spaghetti again.

This is a recipe which has made its rounds on cooking blogs. I first saw it on Smitten Kitchen. It apparently originates here, in a book which is near the top of my wish list.

Anyway, the sauce. The Sauce. There are three ingredients in the original recipe: tomatoes, onion and butter. Yes, that's it. No pinch of sugar or cinnamon, no dribble of red wine, none of that. If you're me, and you're bad, you assault The Sauce with a couple cloves of garlic. This here is the way I make it (garlic; doubled; with residual onion bits) - that Smitten Kitchen post has the original, unadulterated recipe.

You need:

2 28oz cans whole peeled tomatoes (Any brand will work, but San Marzano are especially good. You do have to search a bit for them.)

10 T butter (I usually have salted on hand, so that's what I use. If you use unsalted, you'll probably want to have some salt nearby.)

2 medium yellow onions, peeled and halved

3 cloves garlic, minced

Put everything in your biggest saucepan. Bring it to a simmer, then drop the heat, keeping it at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir it every now and then, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot. The original recipe tells you to remove and discard the onion - me, I like the onion, and it's usually started to disintegrate by that point anyway, so I remove only the biggest, most solid chunks - and then I crush some of those up with a fork and put them back in.

That's it. For me, this makes enough sauce for a pound of noodles, and I always make that much because the leftovers are fantastic.