Authentic Fresh Tomato Sauce | Mama Florence

Fresh Tomato sauce

Delicious Fresh Tomato Sauce Recipe for Your Next Pasta Dish

An updisputed staple, learn how to make tomato sauce the MaMa Florence way at one our classic pasta classes!

Ingredients:

For tomato sauce
• 500 g fresh cherry tomatoes
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 8 basil leaves
• 2 teaspoons tomato paste
• Salt, to taste (generously)
• Black pepper, to taste

Prepare the tomato sauce

• Cut the cherry tomatoes in half
• In a pan with medium-high heat add the peeled garlic and the olive oil.
• When the garlic is golden, add the fresh tomatoes, basil and salt.
• Bring to maximum heat for 3-4 minutes.
• Add the tomato paste and let it cook for 5 minutes on medium heat.
• Add black pepper and turn off the heat.
• Once the pasta is cooked, add it to the pan and mix well. Serve hot.

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Reviews

4.9 14 reviews

Made it twice in a week to get it right. The first time I misread one step and it showed. The second time I set a timer for the part I always forget. It was worth being stubborn about.

Marc L.

Montreal, Canada · July 2026
Third time I have made this and I no longer look at the page. That is the highest compliment I can pay a recipe.

Laura B.

Denver, USA · June 2026
Made it at altitude, which changes everything, and it needed a good deal longer than stated. Worth mentioning for anybody else up in the mountains. The visual cues in the recipe are what saved it, because the timings were useless to me.

Jessica A.

Toronto, Canada · May 2026
Started cooking properly six weeks ago and this is the first thing I have made that I would serve to somebody else.

Pierre A.

Lyon, France · February 2026
Good for a crowd. I made it for nine people and the scaling was straightforward.

Rachel C.

Cardiff, UK · December 2025
I overworked it at one point and thought I had ruined it. The note about not pushing it too far is there for a reason and I ignored it.

Kate D.

Melbourne, Australia · August 2025
It is better if you let it sit for a while instead of serving it the moment it is done.

Ian P.

Glasgow, UK · August 2025
Very forgiving. It went too thick on me, a spoonful of liquid at the end and it came right back.

Eline K.

Rotterdam, Netherlands · July 2025
We ate something like this on a trip to Florence and I have been trying to get close to it ever since. This is the closest I have come.

Silvia D.

Padua, Italy · July 2025
We make this every year around the time we usually travel. It has become a small ritual.

Megan T.

Nashville, USA · June 2025
Looks simple, but the order of the steps matters more than I expected. Doing it out of sequence the first time gave me a very different result.

Marco T.

Rome, Italy · May 2025
Well written, and refreshingly free of stories before the actual method.

Ben T.

Sydney, Australia · May 2025
Half the ingredients are hard to find where I live, so I made sensible swaps and it still tasted like the idea of the dish.

Markus H.

Cologne, Germany · November 2024
Good weeknight version of something I always thought needed a whole afternoon.

Anna W.

Berlin, Germany · August 2024