I can get pasta in bulk very very cheaply, but finding something to add flavour often present a problem. In a bowl of pasta, sometimes the sauce is more expensive than the pasta itself! How can I season my pasta without undoing the savings on the pasta itself.
My favorite pasta sauce of all time is the stuff at Aldi, actually, and it is about a $1 a jar. I don't know what it is, but it isn't overly sweet. That said, in our most expensive grocery store in town, Ragu frequently goes on sale, buy 2 get 3 free. Ragu also always has coupons available. This often makes for completely FREE pasta sauce. I'm not sure where you live, but this would be a good way to go - if you can stand Ragu. I hate it, it is far to sweet for me. Otherwise, many times cheap pasta sauce (or simply tomato paste) just needs salt, pepper, garlic, and oregano for flavor. Roast your garlic first.
You can use cheap Italian dressing to make a cold pasta salad, or drizzle a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with oregano and other spices for a warm dish. When you find diced tomatoes on sale, especially the flavored varieties, they are great for making sauces. Grab a can of cheap tomato paste, a can of flavored tomatoes, and throw them in the blender. Season to taste. Then, all you have to do is warm it through. Less than a buck and you have a great sauce for pasta, pizza, or for dipping bread sticks and such. Leftovers work. A little bit of leftover soup, chili, or gravy can "soup up" your pasta. Simple cream sauce works well too. You can make a super simple one from cornstarch, water, a bit of fat (butter or olive oil), and some milk. It doesn't take much, so it ends up being pretty cheap.
Right now Shaw's has the Essential Everyday sauce on sale for $1 Aside from having a red sauce, you can warm a little olive oil in a pan with minced garlic and maybe basil as well. Once that is warm, just add it to cooked (warm) pasta. Top that with shredded or grated parm cheese - YUM!
The Hunt's canned pasta sauce is always $1 and it's underrated and delicious. It comes in original, meat and four cheese. I think there's a mushroom one too. It's the only kind I buy anymore because it's a good value.
I substitute a canned roasted diced tomatoes, California Garlic Powder, cumin, fresh oregano and cracked black pepper. I always keep those spices on hand. I now prefer this combination to pasta sauce.
Make you own sauce with chopped tomatoes, garlic, pepper and onions. Lidl and Aldi sell cans for 30p and tomato puree for 37p and you can make enough sauce for a few portions of pasta from a can. All it takes is time and some seasoning and then you can freeze or refrigerate the sauce if need be.
Wow. A lot of people here have better suggestions than what I think was the cheapest. I thought those those giant 67 oz Prego spaghetti sauce that comes in two in Costco was already the cheapest. They are about $8 and I could make spaghetti sauce for about 30-40 portions with them. The problem was to keep them from spoiling.
Luckily for me pasta sauces here aren't too expensive so I can pretty much buy a pack and be set for pasta for a few days. However, if I wanted to save then I'd probably just make my own since I could certainly make a lot more with the money I'm spending for instant sauces. I've tried calculating this once when I was preparing a basil pesto sauce for a large group and it turned out to be way cheaper than buying instant sauces, but like I said they aren't really all that expensive here to begin with so I never really tried storing too much homemade sauces.
I too find like the OP, pasta sauces can be hideously expensive where I am. -and they aren't always the best, if I'm being honest! Like Theo has suggested, I will definitely be looking to make my own sauces. I hear Italian sauces are easy enough to make. What's more, because they'll be made from scratch, they'll be a lot better tasting!
I like Hunt’s canned sauces as well. Del Monte also has some for around the same price. When I feel like splurging, I grab one of the $2 Bertolli sauces from Target. Which are a steeper price than the canned sauces for a smaller amount, but I think it’s still a decent value, especially if you’re like me and you can make it stretch a bit. Plus for some reason, I’ve found a couple of the gold label flavors for the same price as the regular line, when the other gold labels are around $5.50-6ish. I don’t know if this is the case everywhere, but it may be worth it to keep your eyes open.
Hunt's is not too bad for a starter. It's certainly cheap enough. We have a store brand here that is very similar to the Hunt's. Same size cans, same flavors even. I can sometimes catch it on sale for as low as 69 cents. I grab a bunch then. I like to doctor it up. I can throw in some spices, some chopped onion or pepper, and maybe a little bit of meat, especially if I have a little left from another dish like meatloaf. The kids will even eat it on its own.
While I've certainly noticed a lot of more supposedly "premium" tomato sauces on the shelves these days, some selling for over $6-$7 a jar in some cases, if you're looking or sauce on the cheap, there are plenty of store brand pasta sauces for only $1 a jar. You might find some for less, but anything lower than $1, I would question the quality and taste of it. Also, not all $1 discount pasta sauces are the same in terms of quality. I've been very pleased with the Save-A-Lot store brand of pasta sauces, but the $1 sauce brands I've tried at Dollar Tree were all hideous, I'm talking barely edible. If you're not too picky about taste, you can also make a simple sauce with just a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes, a little fresh garlic, some olive oil, red pepper flakes, a pinch of sugar, salt and pepper. If you have any leftover onion and/or fresh parsley, throw that in there too. Season to taste of course. The thing is with a few inexpensive embellishments, you get a little more sauce since the 28oz can is bigger than the standard jar of sauce, for about the same price. Another dead simple tomato sauce is to use crushed tomatoes, about a stick (or a half) of real butter, and half a peeled (but not chopped) onion. Just throw the crushed tomatoes, butter and sauce in a pan together and bring to a gentle simmer, then let it simmer for about an hour or more. This recipe has become rather popular in recent years, and comes from Marcela Hazan (RIP) who was famous for her cookbooks.
This is exactly what I do too. It's the tastiest option as well as the cheapest. I like to throw some finely chopped onion and some mixed herbs in there too.
I sound like a broken record but the truth is it's incredibly easy & cheap to make your own pasta sauce. Extra Bonus: make a HUGE batch of the stuff & freeze it in meal portions. No need to waste money on a jar of processed garbage. The money you save you might want to invest in making a pesto or investing in the best cheese you can (which is my favourite thing to do).
I used to use store bought pasta sauces but now I make my own and they are even cheaper. The old Aldi paste sauce was £1 and now I use chopped tomatoes 29p and abut twenty pence worth of mixed herbs, coriander,salt and pepper. If I am feeling extravagant I will put it a square of dark chocolate (It really intensifies the flavour) or a dash of Jack I still have left from a miniature I got at Christmas.
Rinaldi is as excellent sauce that frequently goes on sale for 4 for $5. I don't know how you can go much cheaper than that before you end up with high fructose corn syrup and all sorts of other things I wouldn't personally want to eat at all. You need to look for the big sales and stock up then. Pasta sauce is something that keeps really well and sometimes goes on really good discount, but the really good sales are not frequent.
It will come cheaper if you make your own sauce, it is not that difficult. There are hundrends of sauce recipes to choose from all over the internet. I make my own pasta sauce and I can tell it is way better than the one I used to buy back in the days.
I find that passata which is around 40p a carton/jar makes a great pasta sauce if you add fried onions and garlic with some dried mixed herbs. Also stores own make mayo with salad veg cut into chunks is tasty. Another cheap way is cooking the pasta with an oxo cube in the water when boiling, you get pasta tasty enough to eat on its own.
Goya makes a tomato sauce seasoned with onion, garlic, and cilantro - it's a good basic sauce, it certainly tastes much more lively and zingy than many other common brands of canned tomato sauce - which I typically find them to be super bland and often too salty. Plus the addition of cilantro gives it that little bit of a unique taste. However I especially like it with a can or two of tuna packed in oil mixed in. In fact, tuna packed in oil itself makes a great "sauce" for pasta. Just toss the past with it, and some reserved starchy water - perhaps some fresh parsley and some capers if you got it, and maybe a little lemon zest. Also don't forget some cracked black pepper, and top it off with a good amount of Parmesan or Romano. You can do the same thing with canned clams, and perhaps even add a little tomato paste to give it a light sweetness and some color. If you've got some leftover dry vermouth - perhaps from entertaining guests - you can make a simple sauce with it too (or just use white whine if that's all you got). Simmer the wine with some cream, butter and chicken stock until it reduces down and begins to thicken, then throw in a handful of grated Parmesan or Romano and turn off the heat and gently stir it until the cheese melts into it - if you leave the heat on, the cheese may separate.
