Amatriciana pasta sauce
What is amatriciana ?
Amatriciana sauce is one of the most well- known pasta sauces based on cured pork, tomato and cheese. There are lots of different variations. I learned to make this sauce more than 20 years ago and still make this sauce regularly. The sauce is simple to make, yet very delicious. This is the reason why to make it regularly. Usually I cook a large quantity and divide it into some portions and freeze them for a speedy midweek meal. If you have frozen pasta sauce, your meal will be ready within 20 minutes including preparing a fresh salad.
My version Amatriciana pasta sauce
My version seems to be different from traditional one. I cooked it so many times and adjusted it to our liking. For example, I simmer the sauce for a long time, while most of recipes indicate about 20 minutes or so. As I cook a large quantity and like a thick sauce, I never succeeded to finish my sauce within a half hour. I don’t mix the pasta and sauce before serving. Also I serve grated cheese separately since my son prefers to eat it without cheese. You can adjust to your own liking as we did. Even if you use the same ingredients, the result is remarkably different. It is fun to see what others create. I really like to see the different combinations of the ingredients and serving ideas.
Ingredients for the sauce
For the sauce I use following 7 ingredients.
Sliced smoked bacon or pancetta / garlic / olive oil / white wine / canned tomato / chili / sea salt.
I normally use smoked bacon for this sauce as this is less salty and widely available here in the Netherland. But you can use other sort of bacon or pancetta instead. You need to pay attention to the saltiness of the bacon or pancetta. You can adjust the amount of sea salt.
If you are interested in pork curd meat, please click the link below for the difference between pancetta, bacon and prosciutto.
Here is the recipe. The amount is about for 10 – 12 servings. As above mentioned I usually divide it into 4 bags and freeze them after cooling to room temperature.
Amatriciana pasta sauce
Ingredients
- 2 table spoon Olive oil
- 3-5 cloves Garlic If you are garlic lover, add more
- +/- 800 gram Sliced smoked bacon
- 100 ml White wine
- 3 canned diced tomato (400g)
- 4-6 Whole dried chili
- 3-4 tea spoon Sea salt
It depends on bacon or pancetta. First add less salt, and add more if necessary.
Instructions
- Add olive oil and crashed garlic in a pan and slowly start cooking over medium heat.
- Cut sliced bacon to 5mm width. Once garlic is lightly golden add bacon and cook further over medium heat.
- When bacon is cooked and released fat, add white wine and bring to boiling.
- Add diced tomatoes, whole chilis and salt.
- Bring to boiling. Then simmer the sauce over low heat until desired thickness. While simmering, stir the sauce occasionally.
- Remove chilis from the sauce.
Notes
Freezing and thawing the sauce.
Amatriciana sauce is tomato based sauce and doesn’t contain any cream and fresh herbs. Therefore this sauce is well suitable for freezing.
Before freezing, the sauce needs to be cooled down to room temperature.
Once cooled down, pour the sauce into the freezer bags and transfer to the freezer. The sauce can be kept in the freezer for a couple of months. I use resealable plastic freezer bags which work well for freezing the sauce. The plastic bag is handy to stack.
For thawing the sauce, you can transfer frozen sauce to the fridge the day before you want to use. But I often forget to refrigerate the sauce overnight. No problem, you can do following
Break the sauce into small pieces and put these in the heat resistance glass bowl or microwave-safe bowl. If the sauce is too hard to break, put the frozen sauce in the microwave and heat for 20 – 30 seconds. Then you can break it easily.
Cover the bowl with cling film / plastic wrap and heat it 1 or 2 minutes. Stir the sauce well. At this stage some parts of the sauce are still frozen. Put back the bowl in the microwave heat 1 or 2 minutes again. Repeat this process until whole sauce becomes warm. It depends on the quantity. In case you have small portion to warm up, set the time shorter.
If you like to know more about sauce recipe, please click the link below.
Hope you enjoy this amatriciana sauce. Bon Appetit !