Because of its simple list of ingredients, marinara can be used instead of pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce. Marinara can be used in a variety of ways, as it tends to be thinner than ketchup. On the other hand, spaghetti sauce is much thicker and is best used to suffocate dishes, such as pasta and sometimes even cookies. When it comes down to it, there's not a big difference between marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce.
Marinara sauce is typically a simple sauce mixed with tomatoes and aromatic ingredients such as onions and garlic. Additional condiments and herbs such as basil, oregano, red pepper flakes, and more can be added depending on personal preferences. Marinara can be used as a spaghetti sauce or with any other type of pasta, as well as as a dipping sauce. Since pasta sauce contains more ingredients than marinara sauce, it also requires a longer preparation time.
It's a thick sauce made with guanciale (cured pork cheeks), pecorino Romano cheese, and sometimes onions. Marinara sauce is thinner, not thicker, than real spaghetti sauce or a fairly traditional tomato sauce. Marinara sauce adds an excellent touch to your dish and is more suitable for serving with seafood than with pasta sauce. But because it's thinner than spaghetti sauce, it tends to work better on long cuts like spaghetti, fettuccini, linguini and angel hair.
If you usually cover spaghetti with a tomato-based condiment, then you can't go wrong with the marinara or pasta sauce. Since tomatoes and spices make up most of the list of ingredients in marinara sauce, it's one of the healthiest dipping sauces. It is also more likely to be prepared with both simple canned tomato sauce and tomato paste than with Italian plum tomatoes. If you are going to prepare stuffed pasta such as tortellini, manicotti or pansotti, you have to try the alla Norma sauce.
Or check out this post if you run out of tomato paste and this one to focus specifically on thickening the marinara. It can refer to the simplest form of pasta sauce made with tomato puree and salt, to traditional French sauce that takes hours to prepare, or to any type of tomato-based sauce. The main difference between marinara sauce and spaghetti sauce is that spaghetti sauce often includes meat.
