Start With a Good Jar: The best way to make a jarred sauce taste more like a good homemade one is to start with a high-quality product. Rao’s, for one, is a long standing SE staff favourite in need of little improvement. The sauce is bright & fruity, with a balanced acidity & the pleasing flavours of garlic, olive oil, onion, basil, & oregano.

Add Alliums: You can treat a jarred sauce the same as a homemade sauce by sautéing classic alliums like garlic &/or onions in olive oil or butter before adding the sauce. In most cases, the jarred sauces will already have these ingredients cooking into them, but doubling down on garlic & onion is unlikely to elicit any complaints.

Deglaze With Wine: If you have a bottle of dry red or white kicking around, there’s no harm in adding a splash to the pan after sautéing the above alliums in fat. Make sure to simmer the wine long enough to cook off its raw alcohol flavour before dumping the sauce into the pot.

Season With Fresh or Dried Herbs & Spices: While most jarred pasta sauces already contain some degree of seasonings like dried oregano & basil, a boost of these ingredients in a fresher form can enliven a sauce. A couple generous sprigs of fresh herbs like basil, parsley, rosemary, or sage can all amp up the flavour of a jarred pasta sauce.

Keep in mind that when you add the fresh herbs to the pot will depend on the herb & the flavour you want. Simmered for longer, delicate herbs like basil & parsley lose some of their freshness in exchange for a deeper infusion, whereas adding them off the heat keeps things lighter & brighter. Woodsy herbs like rosemary, meanwhile, require some simmering time to extract their flavour compounds, but if left too long (or used in too great a quantity) can end up making the sauce unpleasantly piney or menthol-y.

Dried herbs are another great option, especially if you want to go for a more classic Italian-American marinara vibe. Generally speaking, woodsier dried herbs like oregano are preferable to dried delicate herbs like basil, the latter of which lose almost all of their flavour once dried. And because many dried herbs like oregano have fat-soluble flavour compounds, you’ll get more benefit out of blooming them in oil or butter before adding the sauce. That said, take care with how much you add: It’s better to start with a small pinch, taste, & adjust to taste as needed, since it’s always easier to add flavour than take away.

Putting herbs aside, some ingredients in your spice cabinet can make a good addition to a tomato sauce. Toasted & ground fennel seeds stirred into a sauce to deepen its intensity & offer a suggestion of Italian sausage without actually adding any meat (as with the dried herbs, most spices will bring more flavour to the sauce if you toast them in oil or butter first, though this does add marginally more time & effort compared to just stirring the spices into the sauce & simmering for a few minutes).

Whisk in Tomato Paste: To double down on tomato flavour in your sauce, heat up a spoonful or two of tomato paste in a couple tablespoons of oil until softened & caramelized before pouring in the sauce & whisking to combine. Since tomato paste is heavily reduced & has such a concentrated tomato flavour, it’s a quick way to make a sauce taste like it’s been simmering for hours without actually having to do so.

Boost the Acidity: Tomatoes are naturally acidic, but sometimes a jarred pasta sauce can lose that welcomed pop of fresh fruitiness during the pressure-canning process. Incorporating acids like lemon juice (& even zest), balsamic vinegar, or red wine vinegar right before serving can round out your sauce. Added acidity also balances the sweetness often found in many lower-quality jarred tomato sauces.

Toss in Olives or Capers: Briny ingredients like olives or capers are another way to brighten up your pasta sauce while also introducing texture & depth of flavour. Roughly chop a handful & stir them into your sauce while it’s heating up on the stove. If you go heavy on some of these ingredients, you can bend a store-bought sauce

Add Vegetables: Sautéing vegetables in olive oil before adding your sauce can boost flavour while also creating more texture. A “battuto” (the Italian term for a finely minced mirepoix of onions, celery, & carrots) is a great place to start, but you can also try sautéed mushrooms, which will add a boost of umami, or fresh fennel, which will add complexity.

Get Meaty: A variety of meats can work to infuse fat, flavour, & texture to a jarred sauce. The best meats for this are fatty cuts with big flavour that will turn tender in a short simmer—think Italian sausage, pancetta, ground meats (like beef, pork, or lamb), & even bacon. Brown your preferred meat (or a combination) in a pan with olive oil to render its fat, then add your sauce & simmer until the meat is tender & fully cooked. Even as little as two ounces of cut meat will add big flavour. This is a great way to add richness & protein to your sauce, turning it into a more filling meal.

Amp Up the Umami: Incorporating umami-rich ingredients into a jarred pasta sauce can increase complexity & savoriness. In addition to umami-rich ingredients like mushrooms & grated cheese mentioned in other sections here, you can melt a couple anchovy fillets in some olive oil before adding in the sauce, or dissolve in a bouillon cube, a spoon of miso paste, or a splash of fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce. Just be careful you don’t go overboard & throw all these things into the same pot.

Enrich With Dairy or Olive Oil: Just because a sauce is pre-made doesn’t mean it’s finished. Just as we like to simmer pasta in its sauce with a little bit of the pasta-cooking water for the last few minutes of cooking, we also like to enrich most sauces with a final glug of fresh olive oil, a pat of butter, &/or a big handful of finely grated cheese like Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. Vigorously stirred into the sauce off the heat, these ingredients thicken the sauce for a more silky texture & round out any lingering tangy notes from the tomato sauce.

On a related note, if you have some old grated-cheese rinds awaiting a purpose, you can also toss one of them into the sauce to make use of their flavour (…though this will require a longer simmer that arguably defeats the purpose of a jarred-sauce convenience hack).

Beyond those basics, you can in some instances enhance a sauce with a splash of cream or half & half, a dollop of ricotta or some mascarpone. These can transform a sauce into something more like a creamy vodka, but please be thoughtful about what kind of jarred pasta sauce you’re starting with. The sweetness of cream, ricotta, & mascarpone all blend more seamlessly with a sauce that has a similar flavour profile—more fruity & sweet than acidic & herbal. That’s not to say a classic oregano-tinged marinara can’t be mixed with creamy dairy, just that not all sauces are good fits for that kind of fat.

Kick Up the Heat: Sometimes all it takes is a little spice to amp up a pasta sauce’s flavour. Try sprinkling in some red pepper flakes or stirring in some Calabrian chili paste for a welcome kick, though as noted with some of the other ideas above, these ingredients tend to incorporate most seamlessly into a sauce if heated in oil first, which will add time to the process.