Homemade Vegetarian Spaghetti Sauce Recipe (That Even Meat-Eaters Will Love!)

This is an easy, flavorful veggie pasta sauce (with practically no prep!) that your whole family will love. And even though it happens to be vegetarian, it has a hearty flavor that my meat-loving family and friends ask for over and over.

Why this sauce is the best

I make this delicious vegetarian spaghetti sauce all the time. I’ve been making it for decades. No matter what other spaghetti sauce recipes I try, I always go back to this one. Here’s why.

It’s healthy

Tomatoes are packed with vitamins, and this recipe is mostly tomatoes.

Serve it with whole grain pasta and a salad, and you’ve got a super-healthy meal! I practically lived on this sauce when I was on Weight Watchers.

It’s hearty

Other meatless spaghetti sauce recipes that I’ve tried tend to taste…anemic. Light. Insubstantial.

But this sauce is thick, full-flavored, and satisfying.

It has simple ingredients with barely any prep

A recipe isn’t “easy” if you have to spend forty five minutes chopping, right? But how do you make a great-tasting homemade pasta sauce without lots of prep?

I’m going to tell you a secret: fresh isn’t always best.

I make plenty of sauces with fresh tomatoes, diced onions, and fresh basil, and believe me, they’re delicious. But this sauce doesn’t need all of that. It’s an entire sauce full of shortcuts, because sometimes you just want to make and eat the thing and not fuss!

And while it does simmer for a while to thicken and let the flavors blend, that’s almost all hands-off time, with just some stirring every once in a while to make sure nothing’s sticking. It couldn’t be easier!

So what are these easy sauce ingredients?

Olive oil

This recipe doesn’t use much olive oil at all, just enough to sauté the aromatics.

Garlic

I love garlic in everything, so I just make sure that everyone else around me is eating it too so that I don’t have to worry about knocking them over with garlic breath. But if you want to add less garlic, you can.

Should you use a garlic crusher?

I really don’t understand the bias some people have against garlic crushers, they’re awesome. So yes, if you have one, use it. They’re the easiest way to get the job done fast.

Crushed red pepper flakes

I don’t like spicy foods, so this recipe doesn’t have enough red pepper to make your tongue burn or anything. It just gives it a little kick. The red pepper flakes are one of the first ingredients added, and they help form the backbone of the deep flavor this sauce develops as it sautés.

To put the amount of hotness in perspective, when I add the amount called for in the recipe, my picky-eater son will still eat it, and my daughter and husband don’t taste any spice at all.

You can add less if you want, but you should add at least a half-dozen flakes.

Tomato sauce

Wait, there’s tomato sauce in this spaghetti sauce? Aren’t those two things the same??

Not at all! When you buy what’s labeled “tomato sauce” it’s either very lightly seasoned, or not seasoned at all. It’s just cooked tomatoes—including seeds and skin—that have been blended until smooth. It’s really bland. But it’s a great time-saver!

Can you use canned whole tomatoes?

So many red sauce recipes start with whole canned whole tomatoes and then have you blend them with an immersion blender or food processor. Personally I think that’s a waste of time.

The only reason to use canned whole tomatoes is if you like your sauce a little chunky. I like this sauce to be smooth, but you could substitute canned whole tomatoes for the tomato sauce, and break those tomatoes down as much—or as little—as you want. You’ll get the same flavor, just a different texture.

What else can be substituted for the tomato sauce?

If you don’t have tomato sauce, you have a couple of good options besides the canned whole tomatoes mentioned above.

Tomato Puree is the closest to tomato sauce, it’s just uncooked. Tomato Passata is also uncooked, but has the seeds and skins strained out.

Both of those are really good substitutes, but you might want to cook the sauce for ten or fifteen minutes longer to make up for the fact that you’re starting with raw tomatoes instead of cooked. And the passata will be a bit thinner than the other options, but you can cook it even longer if you want to thicken it up.

Tomato paste

Tomato paste is packed with flavor, and adding it is the quickest way to make any kind of tomato sauce way more flavorful. It’s basically just passata cooked down until it has the texture of toothpaste.

Dried basil and parsley

There is absolutely no point in using fresh herbs for this sauce. It cooks for so long, they just won’t hold up. You could add them later in the process, but then they wouldn’t be able to infuse the whole sauce with their flavors.

What if you don’t have dried basil and parsley?

If you don’t have dried basil and parsley, you could use Italian seasoning, but the sauce won’t taste the same. While Italian seasoning does have basil in it, it doesn’t always have parsley, and it has a bunch of other herbs in it as well. Still, it’s your best bet as a substitute.

Salt

The purpose of salt isn’t always to make something taste salty (although in the case of potatoes, I absolutely want to taste salt, so I use this, which I’ve dubbed The Saltiest Salt that Ever Salted).

Salt also brings out the other flavors in food. If you taste a food and it just tastes flat, adding some salt can help amplify the other flavors! So you don’t want to salt this sauce until it tastes salty, you want to salt it until it doesn’t taste flat.

Only a quarter teaspoon salt is added at the beginning, because the last ingredient tends to be very salty on its own, so you don’t want to do a final salting until after you’ve added the Romano cheese.

Romano cheese

Here’s the thing about Romano cheese: I don’t especially like it. The one I usually buy, a good Pecorino-Romano, is made with sheep’s milk, and if I just nibble on some by itself, it tastes gamey to me.

But when you add this cheese to the sauce, it blends with the other flavors in a way I can’t even describe. Without Romano cheese, this is a completely different sauce, and definitely nowhere near as good.

I cannot stress this enough: do NOT skip the Romano cheese. Even if you think you won’t like it. It’s what gives this sauce it’s umami flavor.

The Romano can be grated or shredded, but if you shred it, it should be finely shredded, not big pieces (if you have a box grater, use the smaller holes).

Can you substitute Parmesan cheese for the Romano?

Short answer: absolutely not.

Longer answer: While Romano and Parmesan are both hard Italian cheeses, they taste nothing alike. You should definitely put Parmesan cheese on top of this sauce as a garnish, but it will not do the job of the Romano in the sauce. Romano is essential to the flavor of this sauce.

Is Romano technically vegetarian?

It is true that hard cheeses like Romano are usually made using animal rennet (Pecorino-Romano definitely has it, otherwise it can’t be classified as Pecorino-Romano; same with Parmigiano-Reggiano), but it’s also true that there is so little rennet left in the finished cheese that’s it’s barely measurable.

But if you want Romano cheese made without animal rennet, you can find one without too much difficulty.

The Cheese Guy is a good source for many different kinds of vegetarian cheeses, including the hard cheeses that usually use animal rennet. And the website has a store locator, if you don’t want to order online.

Other questions about this recipe

Will meat-eaters love this sauce?

In my experience, absolutely. I have served this to many, many carnivores, including people who practically worship meat. One such person told me that it tasted so hearty, she thought it might have been a meat sauce! This is a great recipe when trying to please a lot of people.

Can you make this a vegan pasta sauce?

I don’t have any experience with vegan “cheese” but if you can find one that mimics the salty, umami flavor of Romano, then you can make it vegan, because the cheese is the only non-vegan ingredient.

Can you use this as pizza sauce?

I mean, you can…but it’s not pizza sauce (sounds like my pizza sauce is the next recipe I should post!).

To me, pizza sauce is a completely different kind of tomato sauce than the kind you would put on pasta. For one thing, pizza sauce should be a bit sweet, and have oregano, especially if you’re going for a New York-style pizza.

I also like my pizza sauce to have a little bit more texture than this sauce. Not at all chunky, but not smooth either.

But sure, in a pinch, you could use it for pizza. You should thin it out with a little water first, though.

What if you want thicker sauce?

When you’re simmering the sauce, the more steam you can let escape the better. If your pot is deep enough to leave it uncovered without sauce splattering everywhere, that will give you a thicker sauce.

Just be careful when using a large pot for a single batch of sauce, because it might burn faster.

A splatter screen is a great way to let steam out without making a mess. And if you get one with feet on one side, you won’t get sauce on your counter when you need to take the screen off and put it down.

You can also just cook the sauce for longer.

What if you want a thinner sauce?

If you leave the sauce completely covered during the simmer, so that not much steam escapes, you’ll end up with a thinner sauce. Just make sure you still let the sauce simmer for at least half an hour, because you still want the flavors to blend.

Or, you could add half a cup of water when you add the tomato sauce. This will escape as steam while the sauce simmers. If the sauce isn’t done cooking and it getting too thick, stir in a little more water as needed.

Can this be made as a double batch?

Absolutely! In fact, I’d encourage making a big batch, double or triple the recipe. It’s a great sauce to freeze for later. Once it’s completely cool, put it into freezer-safe containers. After it’s frozen solid you can put it into plastic freezer bags, or to keep it from getting freezer burn, vacuum seal it.

Some people have told me that I shouldn’t add the Romano cheese if I’m going to freeze the sauce, and all I can say to that is, I’ve been doing it for more than twenty years. The thawed sauce tastes just as good as the day it was made.

There are some recipes where you should leave the cheese out if you’re freezing it, but this isn’t one of them.

How can you keep the bottom from burning?

Tomato sauce loves to burn, but it’s totally preventable if you’re careful.

Cook over a very low flame

This sauce really needs to simmer on a very low heat. I mean VERY low. Even if it isn’t bubbling, as long as it’s getting very hot and steam is rising from it, it’s cooking down, and the bottom will be less likely to burn.

Stir frequently

Once you’ve got the sauce simmering it’s pretty hands-off, but you do have to stir it to make sure that the bottom isn’t burning.

Scrape the bottom of the pot

When you stir it, make sure you’re scraping the bottom of the pot (a flat wooden spoon is the absolute best tool for this!). And if you scrape the bottom and get a bunch of super-thick sauce stuck to the spoon, it’s going to start burning if you don’t get it on a lower flame.

What if the bottom burns anyway?

Maybe you forgot about the sauce for a little while, and then when you stir it, you see ugly black sauce stuck to the spoon. Uh-oh! How do you save your sauce?

Stop stirring

Stop stirring immediately! The last thing you want to do is loosen the burnt sauce from the bottom of the pot.

Remove from the heat

Take the pot off of the heat immediately.

Get another pot

As quickly as possible, you want to move the sauce to another pot to continue cooking.

Be very careful not to scrape the pot as you’re pouring the sauce out! I know you don’t want to waste, but the sauce that’s been sitting right on top of the burnt part is most likely to taste burnt. Just dump what you can into the new pot, leaving the thicker stuff on the bottom of the old pot.

If you don’t have another pot that you can use, pour the sauce into a heat-safe bowl or container, and wash out the pot so that you can continue cooking in it.

Add a little balsamic vinegar

I found a reddit post about adding a little balsamic vinegar to a burnt sauce to help hide the flavor. While I’ve never tried it, several chefs popped into the thread to say that it worked, and one mentioned that a little bit of sugar has the same effect. Just add sparingly—this isn’t supposed to be a sweet sauce!

Add a potato?

I’ve never tried this on burnt sauce, but I have added a raw potato (peeled and cut into quarters) to soup that I accidentally over-salted. It absorbed the extra salt, and I feel like it might work on a burned flavor as well! Just remove the potato as soon as you’re done cooking the sauce.

If you try this, please let me know!