11 Classic Pasta Sauce Recipes to Make at Home

Pasta sauce is the sauce that accompanies a pasta dish. There are a variety of pasta sauces, including light butter sauces, thick meat sauces, and cream-based sauces to pair with various shapes and styles of pasta. You can purchase jars of sauce at the grocery store, simmer a homemade pasta sauce on the stovetop, or use a slow cooker to make this comfort food.

There are many different pasta sauces for various types of pasta. Generally, pasta sauces fall into the following categories:

1. 1. Tomato: For tomato-based sauces, home cooks use a can of tomatoes or fresh tomatoes as the base ingredient and add other ingredients to flavor the sauce. Red sauces include pizza sauce, marinara sauce, pomodoro sauce, and arrabbiata. These sauces work best with tubular pasta, such as penne.
2. 2. Meat: Meat-based sauces, like bolognese, are long-simmering sauces with meat and often feature Italian sausage, ground beef, or pancetta as the main ingredient. Meat sauces can also include seafood, like clam meat for a clam sauce. These thicker sauces work best with wide noodles, like pappardelle.
3. 3. Cream: Cream-based sauces call for a combination of cream and cheese to make a rich sauce. Popular cream sauces include alfredo sauce and vodka sauce.
4. 4. Cheese: These sauces typically combine a large amount of Parmesan cheese with cream or pasta water. Cheese-based sauces for pasta include carbonara (a combination of cheese, pasta water, egg yolks, and bacon) and cacio e peppe (cheese and black pepper).
5. 5. Oil: This kind of sauce uses olive oil as the base. Oil-based dressings include pesto, which features fresh basil and pine nuts, and aglio e olio, a combination of olive oil and garlic. Other examples include white wine or red wine vinegar for pasta salads.
6. 6. Butter: Butter sauces typically call for browned butter and flavor additive, such as sage or lemon juice. These simple sauces are perfect for heavier pasta like ravioli.

If you want to make pasta recipes at home, consider pairing your dishes with these homemade pasta sauce recipes:

1. 1. Alfredo: Alfredo sauce is an Italian-American pasta sauce that typically includes Parmesan cheese, heavy cream, and butter. It is traditionally served with fettuccine pasta to make a rich, creamy pasta dish.
2. 2. Arrabbiata: Arrabbiata is a spicy take on a marinara sauce, where homemade tomato sauce is flavored with pancetta and chili flakes or dried red pepper flakes.
3. 3. Bolognese: Bolognese is the international name for ragù alla Bolognese, a long-simmering Italian meat sauce traditionally used for lasagna and tagliatelle. Bolognese sauce starts with a base of soffritto—aromatic veggies such as onion, carrot, and celery—saute in olive oil until soft. Ground or diced meat (such as ground beef, pancetta, and even Italian sausage), make up the body of the sauce, with red wine, chicken stock, and tomato puree or tomato paste forming the braising liquid.
4. 4. Brown butter: Brown butter, or beurre noisette, is the result of natural separation through heat of butter into butterfat and milk solids. The milk solids sink to the bottom of the pan, where they continue to toast, developing a warm, nutty flavor and a golden-brown hue. Brown butter, combined with an optional squeeze of lemon juice for added brightness and fried sage for texture and aroma, is the ideal simple, minimalist sauce for pasta like butternut squash ravioli.
5. 5. Carbonara: Spaghetti alla carbonara is an Italian pasta dish made with egg, cheese, and crispy pork belly. To make it, combine al dente pasta with raw egg yolks, grated cheese, and a little reserved pasta water to make a sauce that coats the hot pasta strands as it cooks. Carbonara is a good choice for long pasta, like rigatoni, linguine, and fettucine.
6. 6. Marinara: Tangy yet complex, marinara is the quintessential tomato sauce recipe. Marinara sauce features five ingredients: ripe whole tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, garlic cloves, olive oil, dried herbs, such as dried oregano, and fresh herbs, like fresh parsley and basil. You can also make marinara with canned tomatoes, such as crushed San Marzano tomatoes. You can make a chunky marinara sauce or puree it with an immersion blender to make it smooth. You can combine homemade spaghetti sauce with your favorite meatball recipe to make spaghetti and meatballs, or layer the marinara sauce in a baking dish with lasagna sheet noodles, Parmesan, mozzarella, and ricotta, and then bake to make lasagna.
7. 7. Mornay cheese sauce: Béchamel starts with a classic French roux of butter, milk, flour, and salt; it becomes Mornay sauce when you add cheese. Follow Chef Wolfgang Puck's recipe to make a Mornay cheese sauce with white cheddar and mozzarella cheese for the ultimate macaroni and cheese dish.
8. 8. Pesto: True pesto is made from fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, and cheese pounded together into a thick, green paste. (The word pesto means “pounded” in Italian. Grooved pasta such as fusilli and rotini are the perfect pairing for pesto because the grooves catch the textured sauce.
9. 9. Pomodoro: Pomodoro is a tomato-based pasta sauce made from a combination of fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil. Compared with marinara, pomodoro is hardly a sauce: seeded, diced tomatoes get cooked with garlic and olive oil into a mixture that just coats pasta. They both make for delicious spaghetti sauces.
10. 10. Puttanesca: Puttanesca is the sauce in the classic Italian dish spaghetti alla puttanesca. The sauce contains tomatoes, olives, capers, extra virgin olive oil, and garlic. Some puttanesca recipes also call for red pepper flakes and anchovies. Puttanesca is a simple pasta sauce that traditionally accompanies spaghetti, but you can use it with other common noodles—like linguine or penne.
11. 11. Vegan alfredo sauce: Try this vegan version of alfredo sauce, which uses nutritional yeast, cashews, and miso paste in place of cheese and dairy. To make a vegan pasta dish, put it on top of veggie noodles, such as zucchini noodles.

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