Generations-old Italian hack to revive your leftover jar of pasta sauce
Almost all of them refrigerator is strewn with half-used glasses pasta sauce or curry paste at one point or another.
It’s rare that a recipe calls for an entire jar of sauce when making an Italian or Indian dish, and this often results in a lot of food waste.
An Italian woman has shared her generations-old trick to ensure that opened pasta sauce does not mold and lasts much longer in the fridge.
Watch the video above.
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TikTok user @pnb680 revealed her “game changer” hack to keep jars of sauce fresh longer — and it doesn’t freeze.
The foodie and pasta lover said her mother taught her to use olive oil to protect the sauce from spoiling.
In response to another TikToker advising people to just freeze their open jars of pasta, she had a much better idea.
“What my mother taught me, because I’m Italian and we use a lot of sauce, whenever we used something that was half full we would just drizzle a little olive oil on top of the pasta sauce, the pizza sauce or the tomato puree,” she explained.
“If you just put a little olive oil on top… it won’t go moldy.”
Preserving food in olive oil to prevent food from spoiling is an ancient practice humans have used for thousands of years.
Olive oil, especially extra virgin olive oil, completely coats the food and seals it from the air, isolating most microorganisms from developing.
Other foods that can be preserved for months in olive oil include feta cheese, tomatoes and herbs.
The olive oil can also be easily mixed into the pasta sauce when you are ready to use it.
As it turns out, the common pantry item can also be used for another Italian favorite – pasta.
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In accordance the fir tree, you can add olive oil to the leftover pasta to prevent it from sticking together when it is in the fridge.
Drizzle just a small amount of oil over the chilled pasta until lightly coated and toss well.
There are also a number of tricks to solve other common problems with jarred pasta sauce.
If it is too sour, you can add a teaspoon of sugar or a dash of cream. Overly sweet pasta, meanwhile, can be solved with lemon zest, a splash of red wine or some acidic ingredients such as olives or capers.
Salty pasta sauce can be fixed with a squeeze of lemon juice, red wine vinegar or a spoonful of cream.
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