Whether you like savor it, spread over pizza, stir into pasta, or serve as a delicious dipping sauce for mozzarella sticks, tomato sauce is likely a staple in many dishes you enjoy regularly. While making tomato sauce might be easy for you, learning how to thicken sauce comes with its own set of challenges—and that's true whether you preferstore-boughtor homemade, chunky or smooth. If you find that your spaghetti sauce ortomato sauceis a little too thin, there are a few simple ways to thicken it.
Cook It Down
The classic way to thicken a tomato-based sauce is also the best and the easiest, but it isn’t the quickest. Cooking teachers like Christopher Arturo, chef-instructor at the Institute of Culinary Education agree the time-honored method of reducing a tomato sauce is the best way to thicken it.
Reducing is a classic cooking technique. It means bringing the sauce to a boil, reducing the heat, and letting the sauce simmer gently until it reaches your desired consistency. That might be 20 minutes or an hour—perhaps even longer. Tomatoes naturally contain lots of water, so cooking any tomato sauce for a long period of time will help eliminate some of the water content. The water will slowly but surely evaporate, leaving behind a thickened, full-bodied sauce with lots of flavor.
When cooking down or reheating any sauces, Arturo reminds us of the importance of using non-reactive cookware and avoiding copper or aluminum saucepans, as they can give the sauce a metallic flavor. And we remind you that you should reduce a sauce without a lid on the pot to promote evaporation.
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Add Tomato Paste
Tomato paste is a highly concentrated tomato-based product that adds deep tomato flavors and naturally helps to thicken any pasta sauce, thanks to its paste-like consistency. It’s available in cans and tubes, but tubes are more convenient as you'll rarely need to use a whole can of tomato paste at one time.
One of the best ways to make use of tomato paste is to treat it as a natural thickening agent for tomato-based sauces, says Arturo. In addition to helping to alter the consistency of your sauce, this pantry staple will also help to further enhance the rich, savory flavors of tomato sauce. Arturo recommends stirring in a tablespoon or two and cooking your sauce until it reaches your desired consistency.
Add Cream
Adding heavy cream will change the flavor of a tomato sauce, but it will also thicken it. Drizzle in the cream and simmer for a few minutes until the sauce has your desired consistency.
Add Cheese
Another quick fix is to add cheese: freshly grated Parmesan will add umami and thicken the sauce. Cream cheese is one of our favorite secret ingredients and will thicken a tomato sauce quickly. On the downside, it will also change the flavor of the sauce.
Use a Roux or a Slurry
A roux and a slurry are similar in that both are adding a starch to the sauce, and if not added carefully, can produce a lumpy sauce. How they are added to the tomato sauce is important and care and stirring is key.
Roux
Thickening a béchamel-type sauce with a cooked mixture of equal amounts of fat (usually butter) and flour, a roux, is a classic French technique.
Slurry
A slurry is a more streamlined method, using an uncooked mixture of cornstarch, tapioca starch, or arrowroot mixed with water to create what is called a slurry. It’s often used to thicken a gravy or sauce. Cornstarch is most frequently used in a slurry but is less suited to thickening a tomato sauce; the acid of the tomatoes inhibits the thickening power of cornstarch. If you opt for a slurry to thicken a tomato sauce, use tapioca starch or arrowroot
