OhioTom76
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- 11 Sep 2013
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Recently, we decided to try out some of the different brands of prepared tomato sauces at our local Giant Eagle grocery store. While we generally avoid the likes of Prego or Ragu, and are often put off by the high prices of some of the other pre-made sauces (some of them run as high as $8+ a jar!), so we would typically make our sauces from scratch using crushed tomatoes.
Two of our current favorites are the Classico brand "Traditional" tomato sauce, and my own personal favorite of them all, GIant Eagle's "Market District" brand Marinara sauce, which is made from fresh tomatoes that have been slow cooked, no added puree or paste, and a handful of basic ingredients such as olive oil, fresh herbs, onion and garlic. It should be noted that Giant Eagle sells two different sets of their own branded products - there's regular Giant Eagle branded products, then they sell a more premium branded product they refer to as Market District, which is better quality. This is their Market District marinara to be specific.
In the spirit of using a pre-made sauce, and not having a pot going on the stove all day long, I decided to try and quickly pressure cook the sauce with some inexpensive meats. I didn't even brown the meats for color, I just made sure they were all thawed before putting them in, and simply added some ground beef, cubed pork roast and some hot Italian sausage links into the sauce, along with a little water to keep the sauce from scorching. I cooked everything for about 40 min on high and was really impressed with how "homemade" it tasted, in a fraction of the time and hardly any work or prep.
I've tried cooking the pasta directly in the sauce mixture in the pressure cooker, but I didn't care for that attempt as much since the starches from the pasta caused the sauce to thicken up too much, almost like a gravy. So I would recommend cooking the pasta normally, in a pot of water on the stove. But otherwise definitely worth a try!
Two of our current favorites are the Classico brand "Traditional" tomato sauce, and my own personal favorite of them all, GIant Eagle's "Market District" brand Marinara sauce, which is made from fresh tomatoes that have been slow cooked, no added puree or paste, and a handful of basic ingredients such as olive oil, fresh herbs, onion and garlic. It should be noted that Giant Eagle sells two different sets of their own branded products - there's regular Giant Eagle branded products, then they sell a more premium branded product they refer to as Market District, which is better quality. This is their Market District marinara to be specific.
In the spirit of using a pre-made sauce, and not having a pot going on the stove all day long, I decided to try and quickly pressure cook the sauce with some inexpensive meats. I didn't even brown the meats for color, I just made sure they were all thawed before putting them in, and simply added some ground beef, cubed pork roast and some hot Italian sausage links into the sauce, along with a little water to keep the sauce from scorching. I cooked everything for about 40 min on high and was really impressed with how "homemade" it tasted, in a fraction of the time and hardly any work or prep.
I've tried cooking the pasta directly in the sauce mixture in the pressure cooker, but I didn't care for that attempt as much since the starches from the pasta caused the sauce to thicken up too much, almost like a gravy. So I would recommend cooking the pasta normally, in a pot of water on the stove. But otherwise definitely worth a try!
