Jazzing up jarred red sauce for weeknight-quick deliciousness

YOU’LL ALWAYS FIND A JAR OR TWO OF RED SAUCE IN OUR PANTRY. We think of it as a starter kit, something to tweak into dinner quickly on a busy weeknight. And to use up fresh veggies or whatever in the fridge. Last week, after returning from a few days in Detroit, we were pleased to see that a half-pound of baby bella mushrooms were still beautiful and fresh, perfect for a red sauce dinner.

We’ve been tarting up store-bought pasta sauce for years now, but kind of kept it as a semi-shameful secret. I mean, we write about cooking. Turns out we are far from alone in doing this—and perhaps in feeling needlessly ambiguous about it. A couple of years ago, James Beard Award-winning online publication TASTE shared a piece entitled “Shattering the Jarred Pasta Sauce Stigma.” And Bon Appétit-affiliated Epicurious took a practical, nonjudgmental approach in their article “5 Ways to Amp Up Jarred Pasta Sauce.”

Again, a guide for bringing jarred pasta sauce shamelessly (and deliciously) into your rotation is to add flavors and ingredients you like or use up appropriate produce and other aging-out-of-the-system foods hanging around. Some of our go-tos are red wine, canned tomatoes, tomato paste, maybe some Italian sausage and frozen spinach. Or as in our latest batch, a half-pound of beautiful mushrooms. For a more detailed, semi-recipe outline of our approach (and a link to the helpful Epicurious article), check out our jarred red sauce post.