what's the deal with this stuff? do i have to fry some onions and garlic, then add this stuff, then stir my pasta into it? or do i just warm it up and stir my pasta into it? or is it not meant to be used by itself with pasta and instead used as an ingredient for a bolognese sauce?

I have a recipe for Spicy Bacon Pasta which has Passata in it, from what I remember it's added the same as you would tinned tomatoes to a bolognese, it's just a smoother runnier consistency than tinned toms

It depends on how plain you want it. If you want pasta with sieved/blended tomatoes then passata is all you need.

Personally I would use tinned toms for a bit more texture.


If you want a bit more flavour you could get a ragu/dolmio type sauce or ofcourse you could add your own herbs & spices.

I think it's just fancy blended tomatoes

Cheap tin of tommies would do the same job............

Bottled passata certainly tastes better than tinned tomatoes. Best of all are bottled rough chopped tomatoes though. 1) Fry up your finely chopped onions till soft, add garlic to taste, 2) add tomatoes, simmer for an hour for your basic tomato sauce. But there's hundreds of variations you can add between stages 1 and 2.

Nothing fancy about it. It's just sieved tomatoes for a smoother consistency. You are right though, a tin of toms does the same job.

Add a slosh of Worcester sauce and a tiny bit of sugar in a pot with the passata, and it's ready to go.
It's just sieved tomatoes, as said. In Italy it is preferred to tinned tomatoes because it's more versatile, you can use it on pizza, on pasta, as a componento of other sauces and dishes, as a cooking liquid, etc.
Basically, it was invented because tomatoes weren't available all year long in the past. So people in the South passed the tomatoes and bottled them so they could have it all year long. Now it doesn't make much of a difference.

I make my own passata. I then drain the pasta and mix it through with the added mince and stuff.

Sometimes I use rice and just microwave the two together.