Sneak Some Extra Omega-3 Into Your Marinara Sauce With This Canned Ingredient

Pasta is a classic weeknight dinner for a few reasons: it's cheap, easy to prepare, and tastes good. Imagine, however, if you could kick up your bottled marinara from the grocery store with one simple canned ingredient and not only make it taste better, but add some much-needed nutrition as well? Look to canned anchovies. They're the secret to more nuanced, delicious pasta sauce with a nice dose of EPA and DHA, two seafood-derived omega-3 fatty acids. Are you a big fan of homemade Sunday gravy? No worries — anchovies will also upgrade your homemade sauce, no matter how simple or traditional. 

Canned anchovies don't earn a spot on the list of foods with more omega-3 than salmon, but they're packed with the good stuff in their own right. There are 411 milligrams of combined omega-3 fatty acids in five canned anchovy filets, which is about the amount that you should add to one normal-sized bottle of store-bought marinara sauce, or the amount of homemade sauce you'd make for one family meal. This isn't a life-changing amount of nutrients, true, but it's a great way to boost your loved ones' daily intake while also changing the flavor of your sauce for the better. 

Anchovies melt down into a mellow, umami-rich paste after a sauté in oil that will add a whole new dimension to your marinara (similar to our tip for adding soy sauce to bland store-bought tomato sauce). You can add the paste straight to your sauce or blend it for smoother incorporation. 

"Can I add anchovies for tomato pasta?" queried a Reddit post. The comments were overwhelmingly affirmative. "Yeah, there's a lot of Italian pastas that start that way," one response encouraged. "Olive oil, garlic, anchovy, tomato as a pasta sauce is a very classic Roman flavor." On another thread, the appreciation continued: "Think of anchovies as [I]talian MSG," one Redditor urged. 

Meanwhile, a Facebook user added some context to the discussion: "Yes...my mother-in-law who was born in Sicily taught me this trick. The anchovies actually melt when added to your initial sauté, and your sauces or soups do not taste fishy [at] all. It adds [u]mami."

Want to dress your sauce up even further? When cooking down your fish in the pan, go ahead and fry up some diced onion and garlic in the oil you drained from the anchovy tin. Finish with grated parmesan, and fresh herbs like oregano, parsley, or basil. Or, incorporate chopped capers and olives for a quick puttanesca sauce.