How To Thicken Pasta Sauce With Ingredients Already In Your Pantry

No matter how you flavor it, there is one thing a pasta sauce needs to be exceptional: the right consistency. If it's too watery it is just a glorified soup, and your noodles in a bath of seasoned liquid will more closely resemble minestrone than an appetizing pasta dish. Thankfully, there are quite a few remedies for a thin sauce. Even better, the primary ingredients you need to make the fix are probably already sitting in your pantry.

One ingredient many reach for when thickening pasta sauce is cornstarch. However, if you add it directly to hot liquid it will just clump together, so first make a slurry by combining the cornstarch with cold water. Condensing pasta sauce with this slurry works the same as it does when thickening a beef stew. Whisk equal parts cold water and cornstarch until you achieve a pasty texture, then stir that into your heated sauce. It should start to thicken the dish after just a couple of minutes over the heat.

If it's cooked for too long, your thickener will begin to break down, so add the slurry not too long before serving. If you find yourself out of cornstarch, don't despair. There is more than one way to make a slurry, and there are also alternative ways to make pasta sauce denser. However, some techniques require additional time and ingredients, so a slurry is the best choice if you have the pantry staples to make it.

Flour can also be used to make a slurry. The concept works the same as when using cornstarch. Simply whisk cold water and flour together until you achieve a paste-like density. However, once incorporated, it should be cooked for a few extra minutes to ensure no raw flour ends up tainting the sauce. Arrowroot is another ingredient you can employ for a slurry, and the method is the same as using cornstarch. Once you have whisked together a viscous slurry, add it to the sauce and cook for about two minutes. Any longer and the starch may disintegrate.

There are other ways to thicken pasta sauce, but most solve one problem while creating another. You can simply let it simmer until it reduces to a stiffer consistency, but this method can take quite a while. Another technique is to introduce a thickening agent like cream or tomato paste — a crucial ingredient in a bold red sauce. These will do the job, but they will also thin out the other flavors as they boost volume, so you may have to go back and add more of all the spices that made your sauce taste just right.

Ultimately, the quickest fix for watery pasta sauce that doesn't create another problem is to use a slurry. If it still isn't as thick as you'd prefer, add in small amounts of additional slurry until you get what you want.