Oven Roasted Pasta Sauce

Delicious and simple!

Here’s a two-for-one recipe special….for pasta sauce and versatile garlic paste!  The pasta sauce is an easy way to get your kids to eat their veggies, and its fairly hands off.  Prep a few veggies, put them in a glass baking dish, and pop them into the oven for an hour or so.  Puree and turn them into a simple sauce to top your favorite pasta!  Play with the proportions to highlight your family’s favorite flavors.

As the garlic roasts alongside of the other vegetables it transforms into a thick paste that can be used in everything!  It is great on its own, spread on baguette slices, or squeezed into pasta sauces, soups, and my chimichurri sauce that I made last week!  You’ll only need one head for this pasta sauce, but go ahead and roast two…you won’t regret it!

Oven Roasted Pasta Sauce
1 onion
6 tomatoes
1 large zucchini
4 carrots
3 T olive oil
salt, pepper, and oregano to season
large handful of basil leaves

Roasted Garlic Paste
2 heads of garlic to roast (1 for recipe, one for later)
aluminum foil
olive oil to drizzle

Preheat your oven to 375.

Prep veggies for roasting.  Core tomatoes, but you can leave them whole for roasting.  Cut top and bottom off onion, and then quarter (make sure the top that holds the onion together is gone).  Peel and cut carrots into one inch pieces—don’t leave them too large, as they take much longer to soften than the other veggies.  Cut the top and bottom off of zucchini and then cut into a few smaller chunks.

ready to roast

Place all veggies in a large glass baking dish and drizzle 3 T of olive oil over top.  Sprinkle salt, pepper, and oregano evenly over all vegetables (about 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1 tsp oregano).  Place in oven and cook for about an hour, or until all vegetables are easily pierced with a fork.

Cut tops off of both heads of garlic, exposing all of the cloves.  Place in center of piece of foil.  Drizzle liberally with olive oil.  Fold foil up around the garlic, leaving the top a bit open.  Place in oven directly on rack and roast along with the other vegetables.

all of the cloves are exposed, but the outer papery layers are intact

this will make your house smell so yummy!

Once all vegetables are tender, remove from oven and let cool just a minute.

If any of the veggies look like they are browning too much you can cover with foil. This is how mine looked when they were done, after over an hour in the oven uncovered.

Using tongs, remove all veggies and place them in your food processor, blender, or a pot if you have an immersion blender (this is how I blended my sauce).  When garlic has cooled slightly, squeeze to release cloves, being careful not to lose any of the papery layers into the pasta sauce (store other head in a sealed container in the fridge for a few days).  Add basil.  Blend until sauce is fairly smooth and all vegetables are well combined.  Taste and season as needed.  Top your favorite pasta and enjoy!

Bright orange with green flecks of basil—the color will vary depending on your vegetable combination!

I served mine on top of Garden Time organic pasta, with slices of Italian Field Roast sausage and a sprinkle of toasted garlic panko bread crumbs.  It was a feast!  Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

A dinner party feast…delicious!