I’m thinking of growing my own tomatoes and trying my hand at sauce this year, but I know my husband won’t be fond of it unless it tastes like the Ragu that comes out of a jar. Does anyone have any sauce-making secrets that would give me a traditional meat Ragu-like sauce?
Or should I just stick to buying my sauce and leave the tomatoes for the salads?

Sometimes the secret to those people who like Ragu when preparing a fresh sauce is .... adding a little brown sugar at the end. Not my favorite thing, but I swear Ragu sauce has sugar in it because it has a very sweet taste - kind of like ketchup actually.

All restaurant and commercial tomato-based pasta sauces have some form of sugar in them. Tomatoes are very acidic, and the sweetness helps to cut that acidic taste.

Thanks for the idea, both of you! I saw a pretty simple looking recipe on "Emeril Green" and it might just be time to try my hand at tomato sauce. How much brown sugar would you recommend per cup of sauce?

Lexi, the amount is pretty much determined by taste. I'll try to find a few recipes that indicate a measurument.

LMAO! I searched for "copycat recipe + ragu spaghetti sauce" and was led back to this page.

Edited to correct incredibly dumb error in grammar. @self

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DorianGreyed,

Oh, now that's funny.