10 Ways to Make Jarred Pasta Sauce Taste Like Homemade

Start With a Quality Tomato Sauce

One of the most important things you can do is use a good-quality tomato sauce, something you know you like. Look for a sauce with a well-balanced flavor that tastes like real tomatoes. You don’t want anything too sweet, acidic, or fatty; rather, you want a relatively neutral base to work with. Rao’s, Carbone, and Ragu are our top picks.

Incorporate Fresh Herbs

One of the easiest ways to lighten and brighten a jar of store-bought tomato sauce is to add fresh herbs. The type of herbs will depend entirely on what you plan to use the tomato sauce for.

• You can never go wrong with fresh basil or parsley, since it’s likely that one or both of these herbs is already listed as an ingredient on the jar.
• Heartier herbs such as oregano, rosemary, and thyme can add a boost of woodsy flavor to the sauce, which would be perfect if paired with hearty winter gourds like butternut or acorn squash.
• Tarragon might feel like an outlier, but its mild anise flavor works well with vegetables like summer squash and fennel.

Amp Up the Aromatics

As jars of tomato sauce sit on the shelves, their flavor can fade a bit over time. Since tomato sauce gets a lot of its flavor from onions and garlic anyway, it never hurts to add some more. Quickly sauté some onions, shallots, and/or garlic, then add the tomato sauce. Bring it to a simmer and cook for a few minutes to revive the tomato flavor. 

If you don't have any fresh allium on hand, toast some onion powder or garlic powder in oil, just like you would do when sautéing their fresh counterparts.

Use Multiple Tomato Products

There’s a huge difference between jarred marinara sauce, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. You can use the two latter products to enhance the flavor of marinara. Tomato sauce is made by puréeing fresh tomatoes, which are processed and canned when they are in season, so each jar has a fresh tomato flavor. Adding it to jarred marinara sauce enhances the tomato essence. 

On the other hand, tomato paste is a much more concentrated form of tomato sauce. You can use it the same way as tomato sauce, but remember: since it’s so potent, a little goes a long way.

Make It Creamy

Craving something more creamy? It’s easy to turn store-bought tomato sauce into something creamier like vodka sauce. Once the tomato sauce is warmed up, stir in some room-temperature heavy cream until it reaches the consistency you’re looking for. It will enrich the flavor and alter the overall texture. 

You can achieve the same effect using dairy-free products as well:

• Full-fat canned coconut milk can be substituted for the heavy cream.
• You can also purée some canned creamy white beans with water to create a smooth slurry to whisk into the warm tomato sauce.

Add Hidden Vegetables

Tender, quick-cooking vegetables like zucchini, bell peppers, and mushrooms have multiple benefits: not only are they super nutritious, but they are also mild in flavor. This means you can shred, purée, or chop them finely and incorporate them into tomato sauce with ease. No one will be the wiser! We like to pulse them in the bowl of a food processor until finely chopped, then sauté them in some olive oil before stirring into the tomato sauce.

Bring the Heat

Turn regular old marinara into arrabbiata sauce by adding something spicy. The source of the heat can come in many forms–crushed red pepper flakes, ground cayenne, canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, or jarred Calabrian chiles are some of our favorites.

Make It Meaty

You don’t have to simmer sauce on the stovetop for hours to make a good bolognese or meat sauce. Use something with bold flavor, like hot or sweet Italian sausage, to make your own meat sauce. Crumble up the sausages and fry them in some olive oil until caramelized and cooked through, then simmer the meat with the tomato sauce for about 10 minutes to let the flavors meld. 

You can also simmer the tomato sauce with some crisp guanciale, pancetta, or bacon to make amatriciana sauce.

Add Something Briny

Puttanesca is a beloved sauce for pasta—it's a little spicy and quite briny. You can stir in things like capers, vinegar, and the brining liquid from pickles or pepperoncini to give tomato sauce a kick.

Save the Pasta Water

You aren’t necessarily going to use marinara sauce exclusively for pasta, but when you are, make sure to save at least 1 cup of the pasta water. As pasta cooks, it releases some of its starches into the water, turning that water into liquid gold. Add a bit to the sauce—it helps loosen up the tomato sauce so that it clings to the pasta seamlessly.