While the best dishes in life are the ones that taste the greatest, I find convenience equally as important. Admittedly, when it comes to dinner time, I'm super lazy and tend to always opt for the meal that's the quickest.
You can understand my excitement, therefore, when I heard a rumour floating around that the 'world's best pasta sauce' allegedly contains just three ingredients.
Given I consume so much pasta that it's pretty much become a part of my personality and that the sauce recipe screams simplicity, it was only right that I dusted off my apron in the kitchen.
American food writer Marcella Hazan - who died in 1992 - argued that a good pasta sauce is remarkably simple and economical.
Her 1992 recipe is revered by food writers and cooks alike - with food publication Delish even dubbing her three-ingredient sauce as 'the best in the world'.
Her recipe, found in her cookbook Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, contains only three staple ingredients: tinned tomatoes, an onion, and a generous knob of butter.
Marcella's precise instructions are to put half a peeled onion into a pot with butter and tinned tomatoes and to leave it all to simmer for 45 minutes.
I must admit, I was sceptical at first. At the end of the day, the recipe was just tomato sauce, which I've consumed countless of times. So, I thought, 'how could this sauce be any different?'
Regardless, I headed to my local supermarket in search of the ingredients. I had butter in my fridge already, so all I had to purchase was tinned tomatoes and one onion, setting me back just 78p.
Eager to try, I laid out my three ingredients along my worktop - ready to prep. That's when I hit a wall.
I had to re-read the recipe a handful of times to confirm, but it turns out you don't need to slice a single vegetable for this dish - and from that moment on, I was sold, no matter what it tasted like.
The joyously easy instructions told me to chuck half an onion in full, before removing it right at the end of cooking. Sounds genius to me.
The cooking method is extremely straightforward and simple - I added a knob of butter to my pan and left it to melt. Then, I added my tinned tomatoes and stirred them to combine.
After that, I added half an onion (no need to chop!) to the mixture. As a personal preference, I added salt and pepper to taste. Then, it was time to leave the mixture to simmer for 45 minutes.
During my wait, I checked on the sauce while it was simmering and gave it an occasional stir to avoid any lumpy tomato mixture. With just a short time left, I boiled water for the kettle and added some spaghetti.
Once everything was ready, I drained my pasta, popped it into a bowl, removed the onion from the sauce, and laid generous ladles of the sauce onto the spaghetti.
Finally, I was ready to tuck into my blissfully simple creation.
At the first bite, I was pleasantly surprised. While you'd assume that a sauce containing just three basic ingredients wouldn't have a depth of flavour - you'd be fooled!
The sauce was incredibly tasty and the flavour of the onion definitely came through despite it having been removed before serving.
But the most important question... did the sauce live up to its name as the 'world's best'?
While the sauce may not be the best pasta sauce I've ever tried, given it simply tasted like an elevated version of your average tomato, it was definitely convenient. And that's always a win. It would be easy to pimp up with other ingredients too if you wanted to treat it as a base.
Thanks to its convenience, low-budget cost, and yummy taste, Marcella's iconic sauce has definitely forever changed my pasta dinners.
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