7 Weeknight

Pasta Sauces

For Effortless Pasta Recipes

The sauce is the soul of any pasta recipe, which drives the flavour, the texture, and how long it takes to get dinner on the table. Italian pasta sauces span centuries and continents, from the sailor's tomato of Naples to the Roman butter-and-cheese masterpiece that crossed the Atlantic, from the basil-pounded paste of Genoa to the viral weeknight sensation that may or may not get someone a marriage proposal. This piece covers seven pasta sauces that belong in every cook's rotation.

The typical marinara sauce tastes like its base ingredient, fresh tomatoes, which can be upgraded to a masala pasta recipe, using spices like cumin seeds, turmeric, chilli powder, coriander powder and garam masala. Marinara sauce, used in many pasta recipes, has a velvety texture and a rich taste courtesy of the olive oil. The sauce’s name translates to ‘seafaring’ or ‘mariner style’, and is named so because it was a popular dish among Italian merchants during long expeditions.  It is made with high-quality canned tomatoes (to stick to the original recipe) with garlic, olive oil, basil, and salt.

Alfredo sauce tastes like an ephemeral dream with fettuccine pasta, and the combination of the pasta sauce and the pasta type goes back to the early 20th century in Rome. It was created by Alfredo di Lelio, who created it or the first time in 1907 or 1908, as a way to coax his postpartum wife to eat. The original recipe just had al-dente fettuccine pasta, butter, and Parmesan cheese. The heat from the freshly cooked pasta melted the butter and cheese into a smooth and silky sauce that clung to each strand. The modern alfredo pasta recipe is made with cream, butter, and Parmesan.

In its purest form, pesto pasta recipe’s sauce is called pesto alla Genovese, with the word, ‘pesto’, coming from the method of crushing basil, pine nuts, and olive oil in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle. The first written record of pesto Genovese dates back to 1870, to Italy’s Mediterranean Liguria, and some say pesto evolved from agliata, a garlic-based sauce popular in 13th-century northern Italy. Pesto pasta recipes have evolved since then and the sauce is simply made with basil, garlic, pine nuts, hard cheese, and extra-virgin olive oil. This sauce should not be cooked or heated and intead the cooked pasta r gnocchi should be mixed into the sauce, off heat.

This viral sensation that sprouted from the Marry Me Chicken pasta uses the same sauce using a mouthwatering combination of sun-dried tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, cream, garlic, chicken stock, and herbs like thyme adn basil with black pepper and chilli flakes. It is a rich and creamy pasta sauce, but with an addictive tang to it because of the tomatoes. You can use anything from penne to fettuccine but rigatoni is preferred, for this recipe.

What looks the same as marinara sauce is hardly the same when it comes to the flavour. The Italian word "arrabbiata translates to ‘angry’ in English, which refers to the sauce’s heat, that comes from the addition of chilli peppers, that gradually hits the eaters. This sauce, which is behind many desi pasta recipes, originates from Rome and the Lazio region, where it became a staple of working-class Roman cooking, with penne all'arrabbiata embedded in Roman culture. The typical arrabbiata sauce is made with tomatoes, garlic, extra virgin olive oil, salt, chilli flakes, salt and lemon juice.

Garlic butter pasta uses only butter, fresh garlic, Parmesan, and starchy pasta water, yet creates a silky, glossy sauce that is made within 15 minutes. It is the way the Parmesan is finely grated that melts smoothly into the sauce, that gives the restaurant-like finish. The Italians make something called  the aglio olio pasta recipe, that uses thinly sliced garlic cloves sautéed in extra virgin olive oil, then tossed with the pasta and starchy pasta water. Geeting the perfect ratio of pasta to water is essential, for the recipe to be what it is wotjoit the addition of any cream or cheese at all. 

Mac and cheese is the ultimate comfort food, for every other person out there hooked onto pasta recipes. This sauce is creamy, cheesy and velvety smooth, that traces its origins trace back to cheese and pasta casseroles in medieval England. The base of a decent mac and cheese is a béchamel sauce, made with cheese. A great homemade cheese sauce starts with a roux made with butter and flour, milk or cream, cooked until smooth and thick, then freshly grated cheese like cheddar and Parmesan are added and cooked into a sauce.

Try these seven sauces, for seven different moods across the week or pace it out throughout the month when the mood for pasta strikes. If you want red sauce pasta, try marinara or arrabbiata sauce pasta, if you want creamier ones try béchamel, alfredo or Marry Me pasta sauce. If you want a herby one there is always the pesto pasta recipe. All of them are wholeheartedly Italian with some twists to them.