7 Easy Pasta Sauces Everyone Should Know | Allrecipes

When it comes to pasta sauces, there's way more than marinara. From creamy and cheesy to fresh and flavorful, these seven sauce recipes will remind you there's more ways to dress up your noodle. I'm starting with Alfredo. You don't need to buy jarred sauces when you have everything on hand. A lot of these sauces are made with pantry staples. Start off by melting a few tablespoons of butter. There are just so many ways to sauce up your pasta, and if you know these recipes, then you can definitely create dinners on the fly, but also make perfect side dishes. Alfredo sounds like something you might only get at a restaurant, but it comes together so fast. You can make this in less time than it takes to boil your noodles. Classic Italian versions don't have heavy cream, but to me, it just keeps the sauce more stable. Therefore, that's why I said it is foolproof. So once your butter's melted, you're going to whisk in heavy cream. You just wanna get that well blended. This recipe uses a combination of grated Parmesan cheese and Pecorino Romano. I love the combo, but you could just do one of the cheeses if you want. As it heats up, it'll slowly incorporate and melt into the sauce. It's gonna thicken. I mean, it really is as simple as that. Jarred sauces are great to keep on hand in case of an emergency, but there's nothing that will compare to this. Real cream, real cheese, freshly made, and then it just gets seasoned with nutmeg and salt. A little bit goes a long way, and when you have it whole, you're not exposing it so it doesn't turn rancid. And then just a little bit of salt. The cheese has salt in it, so you can start light and always add more. Wow, that was real complicated. The cream is unconventional in this alfredo recipe, but so is this next ingredient, an egg yolk. This is also gonna keep this sauce stabilized and also add a little more richness. Don't be commenting this is not real alfredo. It's a delicious alfredo, and that's what matters. All right, then I'm going to whisk in this egg yolk. Also, using heavy cream over milk or half and half is the way to go here, because again, you can't really break it. You can't mess it up. Okay, then you bring it to a simmer and let it cook three to five minutes, and your sauce is done. You can add more cheese if you want. I like to wait and let it do its thing. Okay, looking good. Can show it's good consistency with a spoon. Coats the spoon. It's gonna coat your noodle. I got my fettuccine because it's the obvious choice. See how it's coating the pasta. It's not overly thick. The starch from the pasta's gonna act as a glue. It's gonna even thicken further once it hits that pasta. That looks perfecto. Ooh, look at that creaminess. Little more cheese on top, and I like a little cracked pepper. Simple but perfect. You can add some protein to make this a hearty dinner if you want, some grilled chicken, some grilled shrimp, or enjoy this warm, delicious hug of Alfredo. Got the worst job ever to have to eat pasta all day. It might not be traditional, but it's a 10 out of 10 delicious. You're not getting a starchy feel from using a roux here. It's just extra rich with that cream. The cheese flavors come through. Did you know Alfredo is this easy to make? The next sauce is one that's a little more involved, but it's definitely one that everyone needs to know how to make. This sauce is for your slow sundae, but it is not the traditional sundae sauce. We are making Italian bolognese. Bolognese is just one that you need in your back pocket. This is special enough for company, but it's also just classic for a family sundae dinner. And bolognese, unlike a classic like sundae sauce, it does have tomato in it, but it is not tomato forward. It's not just tomato. It's really more about the meat. So I've already chopped up some onion and celery. I'm also adding in some carrot, the traditional mirepoix. That's really the extent of the prep. Everything else happens in the pot. Okay, now we start building the masterpiece, and this sauce is a masterpiece. So I've already started cooking some pancetta. Pancetta, similar to bacon, but it is not smoked. Okay, it's a thicker cup. But it still kinda lends like a little bit of sweet richness to the sauce. If you just don't wanna buy this, or you wanna make this on the fly, you can use bacon. I will not tell anybody. Okay, you wanna cook that till it's good and crispy. I started it with a little bit of butter, but it has rendered out a lot of its own fat. So now we have plenty to saute everything else in. You could just use all ground beef. I like a combination of Italian sausage or just any other ground pork and ground beef. You know the drill. Break it up. I'll let this get browned, and then I go in with my veggies. Meat is good and crumbled, smelling good already. You've got the flavor from the pancetta and also from the Italian sausage. Now I'm going in with the veggies. There's still plenty of fat, so I didn't find the need to add any olive oil or anything here. I like to kinda crank the heat up here because I would like to achieve a little color and not just let them steam. And I kinda like leave it alone for a little bit so that it can get that color, and then I stir. Don't rush this step. You want your veggies to be soft, and you want them to take on as much flavor as they can. Now we're talking. And you see how I've built up a little flavor in the pot. We're gonna lift that off in just a second. First I'm gonna add in a little garlic. Now time to lift the flavor off with the wine. This is a key ingredient. Classically it's made with white wine. You can also use red wine if you want a deeper flavor. I'm just gonna go in and we'll see how it kinda cleans the pot. I feel like I've never shown you how to make a bolognese before, which is weird. Flavor's lifted, it kind of evaporates, and now we go in with the rest of our ingredients, and then it's time to simmer. I'm going in with crushed tomatoes. This is gonna be our only tomato product for this sauce. In Sunday sauce, you know, I've got tomato paste in there, sometimes puree, just gonna do crushed tomatoes so we have that tomato flavor, but it's not overwhelming. Also gonna add in beef broth or beef stock. I'm gonna wash my can out with it. And then some milk. This is classic in a bolognese. It goes against like what I know, you know, because I think you're not supposed to cook milk long after you add it to something, but this is going to now cook for a few hours. For seasonings, it's pretty simple. I'm just going in with a bay leaf and also some salt and pepper. There's salt in the sausage and in the beef broth, so you don't need much. You can always add more later. That's it. Now you can go enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Low and slow, and I like to partially cover it so I don't lose all the liquid. Gosh, it might be the best one of the day. Look at that pot of comfort right there. This smells incredible, looks perfect. My mouth's watering, we gotta eat. I'm serving my bolognese over rigatoni. Obviously, you can serve it over whatever pasta you like. Just give it a little toss, and then I'm gonna top it with more because that's what we do. Like all slow-cooked things, I like to give it a little fresh touch, so I'm just going parsley, some grated parm, a little more pepper. Bolognese for your pasta is the something special you've been looking for. It's not your mama's meat sauce. Going right for this piece right here, just calling my name. That sauce is one of the most perfect bologneses I've had, at least in a long time. It's super savory and meaty, but you also get a hint of sweetness from the carrots, from that little bit of milk in there. While you would think this would be really rich, it's surprisingly light and super fresh tasting. I can't explain it, but all I know is 100% you have to make it. It's time for a cheese sauce, but there's more to cheese sauces than simple mac and cheese, and yes, you've seen me make a cheese sauce before, you're about to see it again, but I think what people forget is how creative you can be when it comes to a cheese sauce. Start by making a roux. Roux is a combination of fat and flour. The fat could be anything. I'm staying traditional here with butter, but you could also use bacon fat or oil. So you wanna melt your fat and then whisk in your flour. The main thing to know at this step is that you want to get all the clumps out of the flour. The rule of thumb is that it's always just about equal parts fat and flour, so I've got a quarter cup of each going in. You get your flour incorporated, and then the next step is you want to cook out that starchy taste. So you wanna let it cook for at least a minute or two. Once it starts changing colors, it's starting to lose its thickening power. That's why in a gumbo, you've got this really dark roux. It doesn't produce a really thick soup, but it's more for flavor at that point. We want this to be thick and creamy so we don't wanna cook it too long. Contrary to what you might think, this is when you wanna start adding your seasonings. You can flavor your roux, and then it's gonna flavor the rest of the cream sauce better. So I'm gonna go in with some salt and pepper here. This is when you could also add in a little Cajun seasoning if you wanna kick it up a little bit, or garlic powder. I'll do garlic powder. You can also go in with a little paprika here and add a little more color, because infusing the fat with the flavor is a better vessel to help carry it through the rest of the dish. Now go in with your milk, and you wanna whisk, again, to prevent those clumps. That is the main base of the sauce. Now you wanna bring it up to a simmer. You might right off the bat say, this is definitely not thick enough, but it does not reach its thickening power until it comes up to that simmer, so you gotta let it go. We're gonna cook it for about five minutes before we stir in our cheeses. Now this is a cream sauce. Basically, we have hit bechamel. Okay, now we turn it into a cheese sauce by adding cheese. I'm gonna start classic with some cheddar cheese, but I'm also gonna go in with some pepper jack cheese to kick it up, and at this point, you could also add in fresh herbs or any other flavoring. Okay, and then you can adjust the consistency. If this is too thick for your liking, go in with some more milk or cream. I could just bathe in that right now. Ooh, I added that little bit of garlic powder in the beginning, and you can taste it, even though it wasn't a big amount. Could stop here, but why? I'm gonna add in a little pickled jalapeno juice. Could also chop some up and stir it in. Then you have jalapeno cheese sauce. Stir in some tomatoes, have tomato cheese sauce. See where I'm going? Of course, you could just pour this directly over your pasta. I'm going to put the pasta in the sauce this time. Now, right here, you've got stovetop mac and cheese. Dinner is done. Now, this is a cheese sauce. If you wanted to turn this into baked mac and cheese, you could just pour it in a pan, top it with more cheese, and pop it in the oven, but today is all about the sauces. I'm going to remind people that I put that pepper jack in there. I'm gonna put some jalapenos on top. Give me a little crack of pep. Cheese sauce. Check, I mean, look at it. Doesn't get much creamier than that. That jalapeno was a good idea. This sauce is really simplicity at its finest. It's creamy, but not overly rich. You taste the actual cheeses that you put in there. In case you've forgotten how versatile a cheese sauce can be, here's your sign. Martini time. Just kidding, vodka sauce time. You've seen vodka sauce in the jar, but it does not compare to what you can make on your stove top. It is so easy. I know you already have vodka on hand, so it's also very affordable. Optional, but for the best flavor, the sauce starts with pancetta. I'm gonna brown it like I did for the bolognese, and just really build the flavor base of the sauce. I started in the olive oil. The olive oil gives it a head start on rendering its fat. So you kinda let it heat up all together along with the pan, and let it do its thing. Now that this step is done, the rest of the sauce comes together in about 10 minutes. This is your fast, elegant dinner of the week. Going in with a little chopped onion. Let that get a little soft and happy. Of course, a little garlic. And then I'm adding in a little crushed red pepper. Because I'm adding it in kinda early in the sauce, it is going to give off more of a kick. So you wanna start a little low on this end, unless you like it really spicy. That was an accident. I like it spicy. Now you need a little bit of tomato paste. And then you're gonna cook this tomato paste till it starts to take on like a dark, kinda reddish-brown color. The sugars that are in that tomato paste are gonna caramelize. That's what's gonna turn it brown. While that's browning, I'm going to have my tomatoes ready. I like to use the whole peeled tomatoes, because I think they have the best tomato flavor. But we need them crushed, so I'm just gonna crush them with my hands. You could also put it in a food processor. But I become one with my Italian ancestors when I do this. This is just a better flavor than the ones that are diced and then put in the can. See, it's starting to get a little bit darker. Go ahead and add in a little salt and pepper. Cooking the tomato paste like this just not only brings out some of its sweetness, but it just kinda wakes it up. Then comes the star of the show. It's a good bit of vodka going in. It's going to give off flavor. Then we're gonna let it reduce by half, so it's not gonna be that much vodka at the end of the day. Most of it will evaporate out, or at least half of it will evaporate out. I like what I like. That vodka also deglazes the pan, so it's lifted off any flavor. But you'll see that kind of steamy top that comes on, that's the alcohol evaporating out. So we're gonna reduce that by half, and then I'll go in with my crushed tomatoes. All right, you can see the liquids. A lot of it has evaporated out. In with our chopped tomatoes. I wish you could smell it. Can you smell it? This is what heaven must smell like. Now I'm just gonna bring this up to a simmer and let it cook for a few minutes just to kinda reduce and thicken a little more. The sauce is thickened. Now the final steps are what give vodka sauce its iconic pinkish color. So in goes heavy cream. And you'll see it's turning this red sauce into more of a pinkish colored sauce. Cook this for a couple minutes, and then in goes the Parmesan cheese, and then some freshness. Some fresh parsley, and also fresh basil. I'm telling you, you cannot get this in a jar. Not all fancy dinners have to include a big slab of meat. This right here is all you need. Check for seasoning, and dish it up. I always like to put a little sauce on my pasta before I add more sauce, as soon as it's done cooking. It's already got a little on there, and I'm going on with the rest. Also do a little more crushed red pepper. Good little sprinkling of more parm. Besides a martini, this might be the next best thing to do with your vodka. Creamy, slightly sweet, fresh tasting, like juicy with those tomatoes. It's just like, it tastes like you have money. I can't explain it. It does. It's just got all the best things. It's rich, but yet it's silky and velvety. It's fresh and juicy. I'm telling you, and I've already said it before, but you cannot get this kind of vodka sauce in a jar. This is a restaurant quality meal that you can make and have on your table in under 30 minutes on a weeknight. Got any leftover basil from the summer months? Here's how you use it. Pesto is the perfect pasta sauce because this can be your make-ahead dinner. I like to whip up a batch of like pesto pasta salad. My daughter puts it in her lunchbox, and it's just the easy meal. You can also use it as a base. I recently just learned about taking the pesto and making a topping for fish. There's a lot more you can do with pesto than top it with pasta, but today we're all about pasta. Also, I'm going to give you a few tips on how you can make this sauce interchangeable with other ingredients. It doesn't always just have to be this, okay? But basil, and it's a lot. This is the easiest way to get rid of your surplus of basil. Put it in your food processor along with some Parmesan cheese. So in place of basil, you could use arugula if you want like a fresh, peppery kind of pesto. You could also add in parsley. You can do a mint pesto. Any leafy green you can make pesto with. So you usually have your green, your cheese, and your nut. So classically, it is pine nuts. Pine nuts can be a little pricey, and sometimes they can be a little hard to find. A great substitute that I like to do when I make pesto is walnuts. You could also do almonds in here. Garlic cloves. This recipe calls for four. It says or to taste. I think four is a lot for pesto because this is not a cooked sauce. It's a raw sauce. So you're getting that bite from garlic. So I'm just gonna do one or two. I love the addition of lemon in my pesto. Keeps it from being where it kind of coats your tongue too much. Adds like a little bright acidity. Kind of cuts through some of that richness. Is it like a, is it a requirement when you have a food processor that you gotta make the lid as complicated to put on? So you turn on your food processor, or you can do this in a blender, and while it's going, you'll drizzle in the olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil for this, again, because you are not cooking it. This is the size of everything you want. Now you know you're just gonna add oil until you get the consistency you want. Also gonna add in a little more lemon because I just like a lemony pesto. Now this is not a runny sauce by any means. It's still a really thick sauce. It's a spoon over sauce, but that lemon makes it. Good little pinch of salt and a little pinch of pepper. Pesto is complete. It was that easy. Why would you ever buy it from the store? Sometimes out of convenience, you have to buy pesto from the store. Just make sure it is green. Sometimes when I see brown pesto, I'm like, not today. This, to me, is perfect. It's pourable, but it's not runny. Creamy, bright green. Like I said, this isn't one you just pour over and eat. This is a sauce you toss. And a little bit goes further than you think. Add it to your pasta, give it a good toss. It absorbs really well if you toss it with warm pasta, but you could also do it with cold pasta. And you can eat it room temperature or cold. This is one of the better pestos I've seen or made. You can see everything that went in it. I love that. I'm gonna add some other brights of freshness here. Pesto pasta coming right up. Look at that. That just made my mouth water. I swear we overcomplicate things when it's unnecessary. Sometimes the perfect pasta only needs pesto. And presto, it was done like that. This next sauce is more of a broad category. This is a pan sauce for your pasta. This one in particular, I'm doing a creamy sun-dried tomato sauce. I want you to take this kind of sauce and use it as inspiration for other sauces. It's the kind of sauce that starts with drippings. So those drippings could be from anything. You could've cooked some Italian sausage. You could've cooked some shrimp. I have just cooked some chicken breasts, simply seasoned salt and pepper in butter. And what's left is the base of our next sauce. First step is to create your drippings. Second step is to saute some aromatics in there. So I'm going with garlic, crushed red pepper, and a little Italian seasoning. It's got the fat already in there, but I might wanna add just a little bit more because we've already learned that the fat is going to help carry the flavor throughout the rest of the dish. Step three, deglaze. I'm using white wine. That's the most common thing to use. Delivers the best flavor, in my opinion. It's gonna lift up all of that flavor, kind of clean our skillet. And now you're gonna bring it up to a simmer, and you're going to let it reduce for a couple minutes. Kind of like in the vodka sauce. We want that flavor. We're not trying for it to taste like wine, though. All right, step three was deglaze and reduce. Now you add your cooking liquid, or the sauce, which is gonna be chicken stock, because I've got chicken. Same thing, you're gonna bring this up to a simmer and let those flavors concentrate and let it reduce a little bit. We've got a lot of flavor going on in here. Gonna go in with some heavy cream and make it indulgent. It's very similar to a marry me sauce situation. You can't just add milk in at this point, or even half and half. It might break. And heavy cream is so substantial, you can boil it and it just gets thick and creamy. I'm also making this a sun-dried tomato cream sauce. If you wanted this to be an artichoke cream sauce, you could stir that in at this point. Then you're gonna do one more step of reducing, and your sauce is done. The beauty is your entree and your sauce have come together in one pan. You didn't have to dirty a bunch of things. All that's left is to boil the pasta. This sauce shows you the magic of heavy cream. Pour it in, let it reduce. It thickens on its own. You get that same effect as if you were to start with a roux, but it's gluten-free. It's almost healthy. At this point, as far as I'm concerned, the sauce is done. If you wanna add in cheese, add in cheese. Fresh herbs, I'll do that in a minute. But simple pan cream sauce, done, and it's ready for its pasta. Gonna go in with a little fresh basil to finish it off. This is more how they do it in a restaurant. Also add what started this sauce to begin with. This is the recipe to remind you that you're only a few ingredients away from a perfect pan sauce and the perfect partner to pasta. I didn't even expect it to be that good. But when you make your sauces this way, you have all the components. You've got the savory saltiness from searing that chicken. It kinda gives it a really savory feel. Then you also have that little bit of acid from the wine and the richness from the cream. It makes this whole, full, flavorful experience. Not only is this the perfect coating for pasta, but it also keeps you away from boring chicken. It's like a two-for-one special. My final sauce is one of my favorite pasta sauces, puttanesca sauce, and this one's for all my hoes. If you know, you know. Puttanesca is sort of a strange name, and it also has a strange meaning in the style of. Not sure why it has that name. We are gonna go with the fact that it just has these really bold, slightly spicy flavors. It's salty, it's briny. It's a good way to clean out your condiment door if you've got things like olives and capers. This is another vegetarian option. Because it has so much going on, you really don't need meat. However, if you wanted to throw some chicken in here or shrimp, you totally could. So I've chopped up some Kalamata olives. I'm also chopping up some anchovy. This is just gonna melt into the sauce. You won't know it's there, but this whole sauce and the pasta can be on your table in 20 minutes. Starts with a good amount of olive oil. We're gonna start infusing the olive oil with garlic. I'm also going in with the anchovy at this point, just so that it kind of melts into that olive oil. So far, we've been cooking for a minute. In go the tomatoes. I did the same thing, started with a can of plum tomatoes and crushed them up. I'm also adding in a little tomato paste to just kind of add a little more richness. This is kind of the one I make when I want like a girl dinner, because this is not one that my kids really are interested in. My olives. I mean, it's all the briny things you can imagine. And then to give it a kick, that spicy kick, some crushed red pepper. And then you just let it cook for about 10 minutes. It might not have the best name, but it's gonna have the best flavor. 10 minutes to cook, just enough time to cook your pasta. Get you a glass of wine. Give it a little taste. Y'all, it's just good. Surprisingly, it needs just like a little bit of salt. You get the kick from the crushed red pepper and you get all the flavor, but it's really not that salty. And this sauce is as easy as that. Fish it right over. Parmesan has gotten its workout today, but it's just pasta's best friend. And because I'm spicy, a little more crushed red pepper. We have all that savory, salty brininess, so you want to freshen that up. This is, again, the perfect time to use fresh parsley. It's not gonna change the flavor, but it's just gonna add that little bit of freshness. Puttanesca sauce. Don't knock it till you try it. It's sweet and salty. It's juicy. There's a little burst of tomatoes and olives. Only thing missing from this meal is some crusty bread and a big glass of red wine. If you've never made this sauce, I promise you have to. These flavors are going to surprise you. And you can also skip the jar next time you're in the store. So good. Yay. Leave or skip the jar.