This homemade tomato sauce recipe has a secret ingredient… and it’s not the tomatoes.

I’m not saying that perfect tomatoes aren’t critical… they are THE MOST IMPORTANT ingredient. But I’ve added a little something else that gives this sauce a subtle layer of umami complexity.

A Parmesan cheese rind.

I’ve always saved (in the freezer) Parmesan cheese rinds to use in soups and stews as they simmer. But the other day I was making tomato sauce and I felt like it needed a little oomph. I dropped in a cheese rind and, viola! Enchantment.

Don’t flinch when you see that I used canned tomatoes. I know most homemade tomato sauce recipes call for fresh tomatoes. That’s great, but I think canned Italian San Marzano tomatoes (the ONLY canned tomato you should use for sauces) deliver a more consistent result.

I added the 4 other (not so secret) ingredients and used my Pauli Cookware to gently simmer the sauce until it was thick and rich with flavor. This recipe makes a lot of sauce, so use some now and freeze the rest!

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Here are a couple of recipes to make with the tomato sauce:

Baked Ziti with Mini Meatballs

Easy Pasta and Sausage Bake

Have you ever spent hours and hours cooking something deliciously marvelous on the stove only to turn your back for ONE SECOND and find it’s burned? Stuck to the bottom of the pot burned? Two-day-soak burned?

Yep. That’s happened to me, too. Notice the past tense. HAPPENED. Never will again because I’ve got a Pauli Cookware stockpot.

“What,” you say. “a pot that keeps you from burning your food?” (I’m blaming the pot… did you catch that?)

Yes… that’s EXACTLY what I’m saying.

I met Paul Scioscio, the inventor of Pauli Cookware, at the Housewares Show earlier this year. I honestly didn’t believe what he told me: I could leave a pot on the stove for hours and never have to stir or worry that its contents would burn. He sent me one and I tried it out…

Now I believe.

Pauli Cookware has a patented 7-layer commercial grade stainless steel and aluminum bottom that wraps around a hermetically sealed oil chamber. The oil heats up and distributes the heat evenly, so your food cooks without burning.

Here’s a demo:

Because of the way the pot is made, you can’t cook on high heat… that means no frying or sautéing. I thought this might be an issue when searing meat for a stew, but the bottom of the pot still gets hot enough to deliver a nice brown color.

You have to wash the Pauli pot by hand, but I don’t put my cookware in the dishwasher anyway (you shouldn’t either!). Pauli Cookware comes in 3 generous sizes: 7 quarts, 11 quarts and 16 quarts. It works on all cooktops, including induction.

I’m always looking for help in the kitchen, and for ways to avoid “operator error”… like burning something. In that regard, my Pauli Pot’s got my back!

If you’d like to order your own Pauli Pot, click on the link on my sidebar! Tell them Mama sent you! I’ll have some really fabulous recipes using my Pauli Pot over the next few months.