Marinara can be used as a spaghetti sauce or with any other type of pasta, as well as as a dipping sauce. Because of its simple list of ingredients, marinara can be used instead of pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. You can do it, since the marinara is tomato-based, it's perfect for making spaghetti. But you can't substitute marinara for it.
The list of ingredients for both sauces is very similar. The big difference is that spaghetti sauce requires meat. If you don't have meat but have the other ingredients, making marinara sauce can save you a trip to the store. Any recipe that requires marinara sauce or spaghetti sauce can be substituted for another.
Just hope that the marinara is meat-free and has a thinner texture. In the United States, the terms marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce are used almost interchangeably. Preparing marinara sauce is faster than spaghetti sauce. With this type of sauce, you don't start to sauté the onion, garlic and minced meat like you would with the other one.
Instead, this quick preparation process starts with boiling the sauce and then adding it to the pasta of your choice. Companies like Prego don't even use terms like marinara sauce or spaghetti for most of their products. The main difference between marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce is that spaghetti sauce often includes meat. Another big difference with pizza sauce is that most of them contain balsamic vinegar, a unique vinegar made from grapes that is used in many traditional Italian dishes.
And as you probably know from your favorite Italian restaurants, marinara is also an excellent sauce for dipping bread, calamari, mozzarella sticks or many other delicious ones. It's not exactly the same as what you find in Italy, but it's descended from a tomato-based sauce that was originally used for seafood. However, sauces in jars of both names sold in the United States are likely to have a very similar flavor and consistency. Despite how popular these two sauces are, many people don't know the difference between marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce.
However, the origins of marinara sauce are widely debated; it's hard to pinpoint exactly where it comes from and where its name comes from. Spaghetti sauce is one of those tricky terms because it can serve as a general term for a variety of sauces. It is also more likely to be prepared with both simple canned tomato sauce and tomato paste than with Italian plum tomatoes. Of course, there will be some jars of Alfredo sauce or pesto sauce (sauces that should be avoided in one-shelf jars).
Because pizza sauce is designed to be placed on a raw pizza crust, it's thicker so it doesn't get soggy. Puttanesca sauce: A pasta sauce invented in Naples, Italy, is made from tomatoes, olive oil, capers, anchovies and garlic. However, if you're referring to the traditional homemade tomato sauce used with spaghetti, you can't really swap them.
