Pasta is a beautifully simple food that can be presented in a variety of different ways, with the sauce that goes with it being especially important.

Being of Italian heritage I eat a fair amount of pasta every week, with the sauce my Nonna makes being absolutely delightful. 

However, after hearing there was supposedly a pasta sauce that was considered to be the 'world's best' I had to give it a try.

A recipe for tomato sauce from the esteemed cookbook writer Marcella Hazan has been lauded by some publications as the best there is, according to The Mirror.

Barking and Dagenham Post: The recipe only requires three ingredientsThe recipe only requires three ingredients (Image: Newsquest)

Hazan's name is a highly respected one in the field of Italian cuisine, with her tomato sauce recipe first being published in The Classic Italian Cook Book back in 1973.

What might be surprising to some is that her instructions to make it only require three ingredients which are a can of plum tomatoes, half an onion and a bit of butter.

Making the world's best pasta sauce

Using Hazan's recipe published on Food and Wine, I decided to make the sauce and have it with some pasta for my lunch.

A key benefit to the sauce is how relatively little you have to do as I didn't even worry about having to dice the onion, which can be a bit of a faff.

Barking and Dagenham Post: The half of onion sits in the sauce as it cooksThe half of onion sits in the sauce as it cooks (Image: Newsquest)

Instead, all you have to do is cut the onion in half. The recipe calls for a yellow onion, but as I didn't have one of those I just went for a white one.

After that, you pour your can of tomatoes into a saucepan, let the half of onion sit in the sauce and put it on a low heat to simmer.

As you go you can add in the two and a half ounces of butter allowing it to slowly mix into the sauce to make it thicken.

Barking and Dagenham Post: The sauce is required to simmer for around an hourThe sauce is required to simmer for around an hour (Image: Newsquest)

The key to making the sauce is time as it recommends letting it simmer between one hour and an hour and 15 minutes to make it just right, stirring occasionally as you go.

However, I ended up doing it for about 50 minutes in the end as the sauce had reduced by so much I was worried I wouldn't have much left to put on my pasta.


Recommended reading:


What was the pasta sauce like?

After cooking the sauce for a decent amount of time I turned off the low heat, removed the onion and mixed it in with my pasta which I had cooked alongside it.

To its credit, the sauce was deliciously rich and creamy and turned the simple dish into a very tasty lunch.

The butter obviously helped with that, so you can't exactly claim it to be healthy, but similar to a lot of Italian food the taste is what matters.

Barking and Dagenham Post: The sauce helped to elevate the dishThe sauce helped to elevate the dish (Image: Newsquest)

My one criticism really is that the recipe is supposedly meant to serve six people, which is honestly quite laughable.

Due to how much the sauce reduced as it cooked it could have possibly worked for two but realistically it was better as a decent portion for one.

Overall, I think the title of 'world's best pasta sauce' might be overhyping it a little but it is still worth your time if you want to give it a go.