Fiery Roman Arrabbiata Sauce

By Sprig Originals ✓ · cooked up in Sprig

A true arrabbiata is a five-ingredient sauce that lives or dies on how you treat the chile. Here the dried peperoncino and sliced garlic go into cold olive oil and warm up slowly, so the heat blooms into the fat instead of scorching, then whole peeled tomatoes get crushed in by hand and simmered hard until the sauce turns brick-red and glossy. Finished with a splash of pasta water and a shower of parsley, it clings to rigatoni like it was made for it — because it was.

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 2 whole dried peperoncino or arbol chiles, crumbled, seeds included
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, plus more to taste
• 1 tbsp tomato paste

• 28 oz can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes
• 1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 tsp sugar (optional, only if tomatoes are sharp)

• 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 lb rigatoni or penne rigate (if serving with pasta)
• 1/2 cup pecorino romano, finely grated (optional)

Instructions

1. Open the can of tomatoes and pour them into a bowl. Crush each tomato with your hand or a potato masher until you have rough, uneven pieces — no purée. Keep all the juice.
2. Put the 1/3 cup olive oil, sliced garlic, crumbled dried chiles and red pepper flakes into a cold 12-inch skillet or wide saucepan. Set over medium-low heat and let everything come up to temperature together, 5 to 7 minutes, stirring often. You want the garlic to go pale gold at the edges and the oil to turn faintly orange — if the garlic browns fast, pull the pan off the heat for 30 seconds. Burnt garlic makes the whole sauce bitter.
3. Push the garlic to one side, add the tomato paste to the hot oil, and fry it for 60 to 90 seconds, stirring, until it darkens to a deep rust color and smells sweet rather than tinny.
4. Add the crushed tomatoes and their juice all at once — it will spit. Add 1 teaspoon kosher salt, raise the heat to medium-high and bring to a strong bubble, then reduce to a steady, active simmer (medium to medium-low).
5. Simmer uncovered for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring and scraping the bottom every 5 minutes. The sauce is ready when it has darkened from bright red to brick, reduced by about a third, and a spoon dragged across the pan leaves a track that fills in slowly. If oil pools orange at the edges, that's the sign you want.
6. Taste for salt and heat. Add the optional 1/2 teaspoon sugar only if the tomatoes taste sharp, and more pepper flakes if you want it properly angry. Off the heat, stir in half the parsley and the final tablespoon of raw olive oil, which pulls the sauce together and makes it glossy.
7. To serve with pasta: boil the rigatoni in well-salted water until 2 minutes shy of al dente. Reserve 1 cup pasta water, drain, and add the pasta to the pan of sauce over medium heat. Toss hard for 2 minutes, splashing in pasta water 2 tablespoons at a time, until the sauce is silky and coats every tube. Finish with the remaining parsley and pecorino if using.
8. Serve immediately in warmed bowls. Extra sauce keeps 5 days refrigerated or 3 months frozen.

Chef's tips

Nutrition (per serving, estimated)

More from Sprig Originals

Dark Roux Seafood Gumbo with Quick Shrimp Stock

One-Skillet Blackened Cajun Chicken Pasta

Char-Grilled Oysters with Garlic-Worcestershire Butter

Are you this recipe's original author or publisher? Report a problem