Add This To Your Marinara Sauce For 10x The Flavor

A jar of store-bought marinara sauce is the key to a super-quick pasta dinner, but if you have some extra time, nothing beats a homemade batch of red sauce. But whether you're simmering your own sauce on the stove or dumping premade sauce from a glass jar, there's one ingredient that can take the flavor — and texture — up multiple notches: olive oil.

When you add olive oil to marinara sauce, it makes the sauce richer. So, if you're trying to give your store-bought marinara a boost, stirring in some olive oil can get you closer to that homemade taste. Adding butter can have similar effects, but oil keeps your sauce dairy-free, making it more accessible to those with restrictions. Olive oil is also essential for creating flavor when making your own sauce, as it adds earthy seasoning and also helps to bring out the flavor of other ingredients. When you cook down your tomatoes or garlic in olive oil, the oil breaks them down and they exert more flavor into your sauce.

There are a number of reasons why you should avoid grabbing the cheapest olive oil, but you also don't have to spend an arm and a leg to upgrade your sauce. In terms of easily accessible store-bought olive oils, award-winning California Olive Ranch Extra Virgin Olive Oil (available on Amazon) comes highly ranked, as do brands like Graza, La Tourangelle, and Filippo Berio, which is one the cheaper quality options.

Olive oil isn't the only thing you can do to enhance your store-bought sauce. The easiest step is to gently heat the sauce on the stove. Doing so will thicken your marinara and give it a stronger flavor, as simmering evaporates a bit of the jarred sauce's water. You can also use some of the water you cooked your noodles in as a thickener. Adding tomato paste is also a winning strategy for more tomato flavor, while vinegar and basil leaves can freshen up your marinara. If you want a super creamy sauce, add dairy — try cheese, heavy or sour cream, or even yogurt.

Of course, the key to a good store-bought marinara, upgraded or not, is to start with a quality brand. Rao's consistently tops charts as a favorite sauce, though it is a more expensive option (around $7 or $8 depending on where you are). Carbone is another quality but pricey option, while Trader Joe's Tomato Basil Marinara and Bertolli Marinara get nods for quality at a cheaper price.

Now, for all the time you spend upgrading your store-bought marinara, you could be making the red sauce from scratch. Using simple ingredients like crushed tomatoes (canned or crushed by you), a few seasonings like oregano or basil, onion, and garlic, you can pretty easily whip up a quick marinara sauce. For something a little more complex and interesting flavor-wise, try making a roasted tomato marinara sauce.