15 Secret Ingredients Your Store-Bought Tomato Sauce Needs

Let's face it: Sometimes the tomato sauce you find at the store is just plain uninspiring. Now, when talking about "tomato sauce," most home cooks mean jarred tomato pasta sauce, as plain tomato sauce is simply pureed cooked tomatoes, and no one expects it to taste like anything other than its sole ingredient. When you buy a tomato pasta sauce, though, it's frustrating to come home with a jar of something you hope will make your weeknight easy and discover that all it has done is make your cooking more boring. No, thank you.

The good news is that you can take steps to ensure that even the least mouth-watering store-bought tomato sauce has some zing. Of course, most home cooks already know that you can jazz up a sauce with the addition of some meat or mushrooms. After all, what marinara isn't better with ground beef or creminis swimming in it?

The real trick is knowing what you can add to correct the flavor of an unbalanced tomato sauce, whether that's too sweet, too salty, too spicy, too watery, or too anything else. Accordingly, here are 15 ingredients (or ingredient pairs) to try at home and tips on when to add them to your store-bought pasta sauce. You needn't add them all at once, but rather as required based on the issues your jarred sauce presents. Keep them in mind when cooking your own sauce, as well!

If the idea of pure fat lumps is off-putting to you, or if you simply don't have access to it for some reason, you can add dairy instead for that rich mouthfeel. Cream works well, though you only need a little bit to get the job done — about ½ cup for one jar of tomato sauce. Don't just dump cream in toward the beginning of prep, though, as it's likely to curdle when it comes into contact with the acid in tomatoes. Instead, heat the cream and the tomato sauce separately, then slowly add the tomatoes to the cream, not vice versa, right at the end.

Parmesan is also a great form of dairy. When grated finely, it will melt right into your doctored sauce. Hard cheese such as Asiago and Pecorino will also do the trick, as will aged white cheddar. You can even cook hard cheese rinds right in the sauce if you have time to simmer it for at least 30 minutes. This both imparts a deep flavor and helps use up those otherwise head-scratching ends and pieces. However, if you're using grated cheese, you'll want to add it at the end to avoid curdling.

You might not think that garlic is a "secret" addition to store-bought tomato sauce since it's usually right there on the ingredients list. Yet, adding garlic is not redundant because it becomes sweeter and less pungent as it cooks. When first simmered and then canned in sauce from the store, it can become so mellow as to be undetectable. Feel free to experiment with how garlicky "garlic" tomato sauce from the store is; the underwhelm might surprise you.

That's what makes this secret addition so brilliant: It's one of the things you wouldn't think you needed, but it can make a huge difference in taste. Garlic is an interesting kitchen staple, because when fresh, it's spicy enough to make your eyes water; when well-cooked, it can taste almost as sweet as jam. That's because garlic contains two compounds, alliin and alliinase, which combine to make allicin when you chop, crush, or bite garlic. Allicin is that "hoo-wee!" taste you get when you crunch into raw or lightly cooked garlic. However, heat denatures allicin, leaving you with only the sweet, caramelized flavor most veggies have after cooking. This is also why whole cloves, in which alliin and alliinase mix less, are so much sweeter.

Had enough science? Here's the takeaway: If your sauce is bland, add in some chopped garlic toward the end of cooking for a big zing. If you want sweetness, carefully saute some garlic in butter or olive oil before adding your sauce.

Soffritto is an Italian veggie base used in many sauces. Typically, the Italian version includes onions, carrots, and celery. (This is distinct from a Spanish or Caribbean sofrito, which is spelled differently and usually relies on bell peppers and garlic in place of the carrots and celery.) Soffritto, which means "slightly fried" in Italian, is also referred to as battuto before it's cooked. In French, it's known as mirepoix.

Whatever you call it, soffritto imparts a subtle, delicious, and herbaceous flavor that is often lacking in overly sweetened, bland jarred sauces. You can use it in place of a wide assortment of other veggies and herbs to balance out your sauce. Chop one onion, one peeled carrot, and one rib of celery into small dice or, if you have the patience, mince them. Then, cook them all together in a few tablespoons of fat until they look soft and golden before adding your sauce.

Lemon juice and other acids, such as vinegar, can help correct the saltiness of a sauce and bring it back into balance. You can add lemon juice or lemon zest, as both will bring a tangy acidity to the sauce that not only tones down other flavors but adds something all its own.

When using lemons, make sure to choose nice, firm ones that don't have any soft spots or discoloration. Ideally, you don't want any greenness on them, as that means they're not ripe and the flavor isn't all the way developed. If you're going to use zest, it's important to have a thick rind, so opt for traditional lemons over Meyer, which have a more delicate peel. Meyer lemons are also sweet and floral-tasting, making them better suited to dessert than dinner.

How much zest and juice you use depends on how saltiness of your sauce. Take the same approach as you do with sugar: Grate or squeeze small amounts at first, stir, and taste before adding more. Avoid getting any pitch in the sauce when you grate zest because it can add a bitter flavor.

Basil and oregano are key ingredients in Mediterranean cuisine, a region of which Italy is a proud and member. Indeed, these herbs have formed a part of the country's cuisine since long before the tomato arrived in Europe in the 15th or 16th century. You can use them in their dried forms or, even better, get them fresh and chop them up.

If you're using fresh basil and oregano, you can freely add them to taste. You basically can't go wrong with herbs right out of the garden, but those from the store are nice as well. You can simply grab a handful, chop them up, add them to the sauce, then taste before adding more.

However, if you're adding the dried variety, don't just haul off and throw in the same amount. Dried herbs are stronger, sweeter, and more pungent, so you can quickly overpower your sauce if you're not careful. The general rule of thumb is one tablespoon of chopped fresh herbs to one teaspoon of dried herbs; that's a basic 3:1 ratio of fresh to dried.

Olives and capers are common additions to tomato sauce if you're making pasta puttanesca, but you don't have to go all the way to the seaside to get the unrivaled, briny flavors of these two ingredients. Chopped olives and capers are great in sauce on their own. They're delicious and provide a perfect solution to bland, sugary, or just under-salted sauce.

When you're classing up a tomato sauce, though, you do want to keep the focus on the tomatoes themselves. Olives and capers are both strong flavors that can become quickly overpowering, especially as the best olives are the deeply flavored, tangy Kalamatas or Mediterranean mixes (which usually include Kalamatas). Therefore, make sure to use a restrained hand, usually about one cup of olives (before chopping) to three cups of tomato sauce if you're using just olives, or the same amount of olives and capers together. Make sure to chop them up small enough that they stir into the sauce and don't stand out.

One of the best ways to make jarred tomato sauce better is to cook it down on the stove or in the oven. Tomatoes are more than 90% water, which means they're very (very) juicy. Some store-bought sauces do a good job of thickening their product before jarring, but many don't. If the marinara you pour out looks more like V8 than sauce, never fear: You can thicken it yourself just by giving things some time.

To reduce pasta sauce, simmer it on the stove over medium-low heat in a heavy-bottomed, stainless steel pot to protect it from burning. Don't bring it to a boil, as the sugars in pasta sauce may blacken the bottom. Make sure to start before you cook your noodles, as the reduction process can take around a half an hour. Speaking of time, make sure to store your pasta sauce correctly and use it up within its safe window to avoid food poisoning.