Easy Marinara Sauce

Name: Easy Marinara Sauce
Prep time: 1 min
Cook time: 8 min
Total time: 9 min
Yield: 8 (½ cup)
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 2 cans crushed tomatoes; 2 Tbsp dried oregano; 2 Tbsp dried basil; 2 tsp onion powder; 1 1/2 tsp garlic powder; 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, be careful here if increasing to 2x 3x 4x a little goes a long way; 2 Tbsp maple syrup; Salt to taste

This WFPB marinara sauce takes just one pot, seven ingredients, and less than 10 minutes to make. It’s easy, healthy, oil-free, and delicious. Once we realized how simple homemade marinara is, we knew we’d never need to buy another jar. Perfect over spaghetti noodles.

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Prep: 1 min Cook: 8 min Servings: 8

Ingredients

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2 cans crushed tomatoes
2 Tbsp dried oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil
2 tsp onion powder
1½ tsp garlic powder
¼ tsp red pepper flakes , be careful here if increasing to 2x 3x 4x a little goes a long way
2 Tbsp maple syrup
Salt to taste

Method

Add all ingredients to a large pot and simmer over medium to medium-high heat for 2 to 3 minutes.
Lower the heat and continue cooking for another 5 to 6 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Great on your favorite pasta and makes an awesome pizza sauce.

Nutrition per serving (estimated)

56 cal
1.6g protein
0.5g fat
11.7g carbs
2.6g fiber
3.1g sugar
145mg sodium

About the ingredients

crushed tomatoes Solanum lycopersicum: Ripe tomatoes crushed and packed in their own juice (typically canned). Just tomato fruit, minimally processed with no required additions. Whole-food plant; fiber and matrix largely intact. Canonical.
dried oregano Origanum vulgare: Mediterranean oregano = Origanum vulgare; Mexican oregano = Lippia graveolens (Verbenaceae). Name covers multiple species but all are whole-leaf herbs, so verdict unaffected.
dried basil Ocimum basilicum: An aromatic culinary herb in the mint family, used fresh or dried for its leaves. Native to tropical Asia and Africa, central to Italian, Thai, and South Asian cooking. A whole-plant leaf, minimally processed. Fully canonical for WFPB.
onion powder Allium cepa: Bulb vegetable, eaten raw or cooked. Whole minimally-processed plant food; 'organic' refers to cultivation only. WFPB-canonical.
garlic powder Allium sativum: Garlic itself is canonical, but extract denotes a concentrated/isolated derivative outside the whole-food canon. Marketed as natural/healthy supplement, hence mistaken-as-WFPB flag.
red pepper flakes Capsicum annuum: New World chili pepper, typically dried and ground into a pungent red powder. The whole fruit (minus inedible stem) is used. Rich in capsaicin, vitamins A and C. Whole-food spice, no additives. WFPB-canonical.
maple syrup Acer saccharum: Maple syrup is sugar maple sap boiled down to a concentrated sugar syrup (~66% sugar). Grading (A/B) reflects color/flavor, not processing. It is a concentrated sweetener with no fiber or food matrix — a refined-sugar isolate by WFPB standards. Noncanonical.
Salt NaCl: Crystalline sodium chloride, harvested by evaporating seawater or mining rock-salt deposits. Used as seasoning and preservative since antiquity—central to trade and food economies for millennia. A mineral, not a plant food, and a sodium isolate; noncanonical to WFPB.