A watercolour of penne coated in a dark glossy red chilli tomato sauce
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Penne all'arrabbiata

Arrabbiata with passata

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Olive oil.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
3
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
1.2 L
Active
8 min
Total
20 min

Ingredients

Five ingredients and nothing to hide behind, which is why the technique matters more here than in most of these.

  1. Pasta on. Keep a mugful of the water before draining.
  2. Oil hot in a second pan or after draining in the same one. Garlic granules and chilli, thirty seconds.
  3. Passata in with the salt. Cook it hard, not gently. Eight to ten minutes at a proper bubble until it darkens and thickens. A pale watery arrabbiata is an undercooked one.
  4. Drained pasta straight in with a splash of the cooking water, turned through over the heat for a minute until the sauce clings.

The pasta water is the only thing standing in for the emulsifier a restaurant would use. Sauce that slides off the pasta into a puddle is sauce that never met any.

Serves 3. The chilli quantity is a starting point and the dish is named after being angry.

What this was adapted from

Penne all'arrabbiata: the Roman sauce of tomato, garlic and dried chilli, cooked hard and fast

  • fresh garlic sliced into cold oil → garlic granules bloomed in warm oil

    The original starts garlic in cold oil so it perfumes as it heats. Granules need the opposite, a brief hit of heat once the oil is hot, or they stay powdery. Same destination, opposite method.