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Here's what I'm using:
I start by lightly cooking the garlic cloves in olive oil until they brown. Then I add the tomatoes, followed by the wine, oregano, salt, basil, and cheese. I then slow cook everything for about an hour.
The sauce is turning out kind of watery though. How I can thicken it into a proper hearty Italian pasta sauce?
The best way to thicken marinara sauce for me, without losing any taste is to cook it a little longer.
Cooking it longer is just keeping the sauce on simmer, uncovered and stirring it occasionally so its cooking consistently and taking it off the heat when you think it has reached desired thickness.
You can also try draining the tomatoes before you crush them.
You could even try adding little breadcrumbs, but it might change the taste.
There are a number of ways to help thicken sauce, but I think your first problem is you're not cooking it down enough. You want to simmer uncovered (sometimes a couple of hours), stirring often, to get it to thicken the way it sounds you want.
I tend to prefer fresh tomatoes to canned and avoid tomato paste (personally) to avoid a somewhat bitter flavor (until you pan fry the bitterness out of it first).
If your sauce doesn't taste watery and is just simply too thin, I'd suggest undercooking the pasta by a few minutes and letting it finish in the sauce (a handful of parmesan cheese doesn't hurt either).
Here's an example of it being done
This is my favorite way to finish pasta, and I will actually dilute thicker sauces with pasta water to do this.
A suggestion I would contribute is to swap the red wine for a smaller portion of red wine vinegar. It gives it a nice acidic flavor (you can balance this with some white sugar which will help it thicken even more, but I prefer my red sauces with more tang). It will also have less fluid overall.
There are two ways.
Just like they are telling you. The water in the crushed tomatoes is killing it. Get whole tomatoes peeled, drain the water and blend them. Sauce should be perfect.
Or cook longer giving flavors a better chance to meld. I prefer cooking down.
If you don't mind a smoother sauce, like for pizza or the like, you can use an immersion or traditional blender to puree the sauce. This will make the sauce thicker and smoother. How thick, exactly, depends on how chunky the tomatoes are to begin with. If they are already fairly finely crushed, this won't help much. If they are more of a diced variety, this will help immensely. That being said, you are moving away from a traditional marinara if you puree too much. Maybe try removing some of the sauce, pureeing it, then stirring it back in. Old kitchen trick for thickening things without using cornstarch or a roux without necessarily compromising the original texture.
I cook my sauce for two days on and off it, always starts out watery and thickens with the simmer over that period. hope that helps
