Yahoo Lifestyle Our Food Editors Agree: This Controversial Hack Makes Jarred Pasta Sauce So Much Better
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Even though I'm a food editor who loves to cook, there are a few things I won't make from scratch — marinara sauce being one of them. Brands like Rao's and Carbone have spent decades (and dollars) perfecting their recipes with minimal ingredients and no hard-to-pronounce preservatives — so why reinvent the wheel?
That said, jarred sauce doesn’t always have the heart of a homemade version, so I like to add a little something to make it special. (And if you doctor up a store-bought ingredient, that counts as "homemade," right?!)
Here's what your marinara is missing
My go-to flavor booster is almost as controversial as Bobby Flay's sugar or Marcella Hazan's butter. I swear by a splash of fish sauce in my marinara — I think it adds a savory depth that takes store-bought sauce from good to great.
A staple in Southeast Asian cuisines, fish sauce traditionally brings umami richness to dishes like shaking beef, larb and nuoc cham, while also enhancing curries, stews and even papaya salad.
Fish Sauce
Where does all that flavor come from? Fish sauce is made by fermenting fish with salt for months or even years. As the fish naturally breaks down, it releases a deeply savory liquid that’s then filtered and bottled. A little goes a long way, so one bottle will last you a while. If it’s not already in your pantry, it’s a worthwhile addition.
How I tested marinara sauce upgrades
Although I've enjoyed fish sauce in many marinaras at home, I wanted to see how it compared to other popular sauce additions, like soy sauce and red miso. I chose these ingredients because they boast a quality often missing from marinara sauce: umami. The tomato-based partner to pasta is typically bright and tangy but lacks savory depth. That's where fish sauce (or soy sauce or miso) comes in.
I popped open a jar of Rao's marinara (a GH Test Kitchen favorite!) and divided it into four equal 8-ounce portions. I heated each one separately, adding 3/4 teaspoon soy sauce to one, 1/4 teaspoon fish sauce to another and 1/2 teaspoon red miso to the third, leaving the fourth plain as a control. I then transferred the sauces to glass bowls and had my fellow food editors taste them blind, unaware of which ingredient was in each.
The results
The red miso was too overpowering, while the plain version tasted too acidic compared to the others. Tasters were torn between the soy sauce and fish sauce options, but ultimately fish sauce won by a slight majority vote. For good measure, we paired pasta with all four sauces and tasted it again. The fish sauce still won.
Both the fish sauce and soy sauce balanced the acidity of the marinara and deepened its flavor, but the fish sauce added a subtle sweetness that rounded out the sauce — so much so that everyone kept coming back for second and third tastes.
The best way to boost your marinara sauce
So here's my advice: Stir 1 teaspoon of fish sauce into a 32-ounce jar of marinara sauce for a major flavor improvement.
If you’re curious, you can try my Test Kitchen experiment at home by dividing a jar of marinara in half and adding 1/2 teaspoon of fish sauce to one portion while leaving the other plain — then see which version your family prefers.
While fish sauce may seem like an unexpected addition, it actually has an Italian counterpart. The salty, funky condiment is strikingly similar to garum, a fermented fish sauce that was a staple in ancient Roman cuisine. While garum isn’t widely consumed in its original form today, anchovy-based sauces remain popular in Italy — just like the small, silver fish themselves. Right out of the tin, anchovies make a fantastic addition to marinara, adding depth and complexity.
Whether you opt for fish sauce, soy sauce or another umami-packed ingredient (I'm looking at you, Worcestershire), it's easy to elevate jarred sauce with something you likely already have in your pantry. The best part? Now you can go ahead and call it homemade.
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