9.5 vodka sauce!

i think its time to give out my vodka sauce recipe! i already emailed it to Natalia, who passed it to Negin, whos making it tonight :) :) which makes me so happy! so i figure i should put it up here too..

i never thought i could make a sauce properly. but it turned out better than i could have imagined! dipak in all his infamous wonder, gave it a 9.5! and since he refuses to give almost anything an actual 10, thats huge news haha.

so heres something so obvious, and yet i didnt think it was true.... food is named after its ingredients. lol .. the things that particularly confused me were things like "tequila chicken" or "vodka sauce". did you know that vodka sauce actually has VODKA in it??! i didnt! ... and it does. a whole cup! ...and tequila chicken has tequila too but this isnt about that.

also, you should know that this recipe makes a whole jar of sauce! if you dont have an empty jar sitting around, use tupperware. its totally worth saving! the ingredients are:

1/2 stick of butter
1 onion (diced)
1 tsp garlic (minced)
1 cup vodka (i bought this random vodka called 360, the bottle is so cute!)
1 giant can (28oz) crushed tomatoes (or two 14oz cans obviously lol)
1 pint heavy cream (you dont have to use the whole pint.. we'll get to that)
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 full tsp dried basil
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (leave out the peppers if you dont like spice)
2 tsp sugar
salt to taste

find a big skillet that is deeper than your other skillets ... put the heat on medium and throw in your butter. move it around until it gets melty, then throw in your onions and garlic ... is it just me or do i start all my recipes like that? - anyway, when the onions get slightly brown, pour in your cup of vodka! let it cook on medium heat for 10 minutes!

when your alcohol has cooked for 10 minutes solid, pour in your big can of tomatoes, and all your spices now. stir it all around and mix everything together properly, and then let it cook on med/low for 20 minutes. stir it around every few minutes so that the bottom doesnt burn.

honestly, at this point you COULD totally stop and youd have awesome marinara! in fact i think ill do that next time and jar that too! taste it at this point and see how much salt it needs. however, continuing on to the next step will create the vodka sauce!

after that, you can decide how much cream you want to use! i used about 3/4 of the pint.. but then your sauce will be thick when its all finished and cooled off a little. (thats another thing i learned, when sauce cools, it becomes thicker. these things seem super obvious, but i had no idea until i did it myself) if you like your sauce more soupy, then you can use all your cream. the first time i made it, i poured the cream until the sauce became the orange color i wanted.. then i stopped. so you choose how orange you want your sauce :)

when you pour your cream in, cook the sauce for another 10 minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally.  and then pour it over your cooked pasta! suuuuper good!

when i made my vodka sauce pasta meal, i also took a handful of cheese and tossed it into the sauce at the end, with chopped up andouille sausage! it was amazing!! the cheese made the sauce even more chunky, but it was still awesome. and in this photo, i wanted to have garlic bread, but we only had naan, so its pasta, vodka sauce and garlic naan lol