The Ingredient You Should Be Adding To Spaghetti Sauce

For all the endless spaghetti sauce recipes in existence, which also include "tomato sauce," "red sauce," and "Sunday gravy," there is but one cheap, easy, two-second way to improve them all. It does not involve starting your own tomato canning company, sourcing any scarce ingredients, or even staring at the stove all day. Whether you're following grandmom's treasured, handwritten instructions or something plucked off the internet, a few shakes of MSG will bolster all of your sauces, whatever you call them.

Monosodium glutamate, better known by its previously unfairly maligned moniker, MSG, is a flavor enhancer that is naturally found in foodstuffs like tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, and anchovies. And even when rendered down into a crystalline powder and sold in adorable bottles like this Ajinomoto set, it packs an umami punch. Its dish-boosting capabilities alone are what make MSG deserving of a spot among your seasonings, and it's like a refiner for those items that already factor into so many marinaras, puttanescas, and ragus. Around a half teaspoon should do, potent as MSG is.

MSG is particularly clutch for those evenings when a spaghetti sauce is made up of little more than a carton of burst cherry tomatoes in extra virgin olive oil with garlic, onion, salt, pepper, and a splash of pasta water. That casual combo is great and decently quick all on its own, but the MSG gives it the more studied, finished quality of your more elaborate efforts. It's never going to replace the effect of slowly simmered bones, the leftovers you should always take from a restaurant for this very purpose, but it's as close as you can get with so little additional effort.

Since plenty of store-bought produce is removed from sun-kissed farm freshness, MSG is just the special ingredient to upgrade those lackluster tomatoes. It works to reemphasize the fruit's peak composition. It similarly enhances what's already great about your anchovies and Parmesan, too. And just like any other appropriately applied seasoning, it helps whatever it touches to perform at its best, activating new depths of flavor.