Foodie Fridays: Three-Ingredient Butter Marinara Sauce

My sister was the first one to bring to my attention Marcella Hazen's Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, which many consider to be the best marinara sauce recipe ever.  It is also one of the easiest, and only calls for three ingredients (plus salt if needed).  At the moment I am blessed (or cursed?) with a substantial surplus of cherry tomatoes from my garden, thanks to our unusually mild fall weather.  Normally I eat these tomatoes fresh, but there is no way I can finish off two pounds of cherry tomatoes before they start to deteriorate, so I decided to use them in this tomato sauce recipe.

I did have to make a few changes to the original recipe, because as a lazy cook there was no way I was going to peel two pounds of cherry tomatoes, so they got cooked with their skins on.  Also, my frugal mind could not wrap itself around the idea of simmering the sauce with onion halves and then just discarding the onion.  Instead, I diced my onion before adding it to the sauce and had no intention of removing it.  To deal with the tomato skins and onion pieces, I simply used my immersion blender to whirl everything into a relatively smooth consistency.  There were still some noticeable pieces of tomato skin in the sauce, but to my mind they were just an added nutritional benefit in the form of fiber, and did not bother me one bit.  This really is a very tasty marinara sauce, and I will make it again even if I have to buy tomatoes!

Three-Ingredient Butter Marinara Sauce

2 lbs. cherry tomatoes (or 28-oz. can whole peeled tomatoes)
5 T. butter*
1 small onion, diced
salt to taste

Put all of the ingredients into a 3-4 quart pot.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce the heat to simmer and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally with a spoon and crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot as they soften.

Remove the pot from the heat and cool slightly.  Use an immersion blender to blend the sauce into a relatively smooth consistency.  Serve over pasta with grated Parmesan cheese and/or meatballs.  Serves 2-4.

*I used Country Crock Plant Butter Sticks with Olive Oil.