This slow cooker marinara sauce is a beautiful red blend of chunky tomatoes, fresh basil and aromatic spices. It’s absolute perfection on spaghetti, and it could be used on a hundred other things, too. That’s the beauty of this slow cooker recipe: it makes a lot, so you can store some in the fridge or freeze it for later use in a lasagna or pasta bake.
Don’t worry, making homemade marinara sauce isn’t complicated or difficult. In fact, it’s so easy, you can put it all the ingredients in the slow cooker and let it simmer all day, just as if you were making it on a stovetop. Need a meat sauce? Just add cooked ground beef, pork, turkey or sausage to the finished sauce, and you’re good to go.
You can always have delicious, homemade marinara sauce on hand, save money on jarred sauces and know what ingredients are in your food when you use this simple and flavorful slow cooker marinara recipe.
Slow Cooker Marinara Sauce
Ingredients
Instructions
- In a large saucepot over medium-high heat, heat oil. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until the onion is translucent and garlic is golden, about 4 minutes.
- Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, parsley, oregano, salt, dried basil and pepper. Bring to a boil, then pour tomato mixture into the slow cooker crock.
- Cover slow cooker and cook on HIGH for 4 to 5 hours or LOW for 9 to 10 hours. Stir in fresh basil before serving.
- To store, cool and place in air-tight containers. Freeze up to 6 months.
Notes
- If you have a slow cooker with stovetop-safe cookware, substitute it for the saucepot in the directions above. After cooking the onions and garlic, add ingredients as listed, place the cookware in base, cover and cook as directed.
- For a meat sauce, add 2 to 2 1/2 pounds of cooked and drained lean ground beef, turkey or sausage to the crock with the other ingredients, then continue to cook as directed.
Try these slow cooker recipes, too
https://blog.hamiltonbeach.com/slow-cooker-maple-bourbon-wings/
https://blog.hamiltonbeach.com/slow-cooker-mango-chicken/
For the cook who is busy all day but wants a home-cooked dinner at night, a slow cooker is the answer. And with the Set & Forget® Programmable Slow Cooker, technology takes a big leap forward from the outdated slow cookers found in yesterday’s kitchens.
could you pressure can this say for 40 mins @ 12psi for quarts and 35 mins for pints for shelf storage?
Thank you so much for your question. While we don’t consider ourselves experts on the intricacies of canning, we do recommend following Marisa of Food in Jars. She discusses canning tomato sauce on her blog, and it’s an interesting read. We hope this is helpful for you. Happy cooking!
I would suggest that you omit the 2 tsp of salt from the recipe if the canned tomato products you are using are the regular kind rather than the “no salt added “varieties. I would also ask you to include the nutritional information for the recipe as given. ou certainly could not call this recipe healthy with the amount of sodium it contains as given.
Hi, Lynn. Thanks for your comment. Some people do need to be careful of their sodium intake in order to be at their healthiest. For those individuals, your recommendations could be a good solution. Of course, as individual dietary needs vary, we hope anyone making this or any recipe will be mindful of these considerations as it pertains to their unique situation.
Can’t wait to try
Can you freeze this?