Italian Summer Vegan

Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce

Name: Spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 28 min
Yield: 3
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 300 g Spaghetti; 30 g Salt; 800 g Ripe tomatoes; 4 tbsp Olive oil; 3 cloves Garlic; 10 g Fresh basil; 3 g Sugar, if needed

Fresh tomatoes, garlic, olive oil and basil. With ripe summer tomatoes, a fifteen-minute sauce — and reducing the tomato water by half is what makes it cling.

Pasta and noodles · Italian · Under 30 minutes · Vegan · Seasonal

28 minTime

592Kcal / serving

1776Total kcal

Preparation: 10 min
Cooking: 18 min
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Cheap
Season: Summer

Where this dish comes from

Southern Italy’s pomodoro. Tomato flavour comes with ripeness: a July-to-September field tomato carries close to twice the sugar of a winter greenhouse one. In winter, whole tinned tomatoes give the better result.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Halve the tomatoes and grate them cut side down; the skin stays in your hand.
Slice the garlic thin.

You will need: A pot · A wide frying pan · A grater

Warm the garlic in the olive oil on a low flame for one to two minutes, without colour.

Look for It should smell strongly and not change colour.

Why Garlic turns bitter above 160 °C; on a low flame it gives its aroma to the oil.

If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.
Add the grated tomato and the sugar and cook on a medium flame, stirring now and then, for 12–15 minutes, until reduced by half.

Look for The sauce thick, a spoon line stays open, and oil glints at the edge.

Why Tomato is 93–95% water; halving it concentrates the flavour and lets the sauce coat. Sugar only if the tomatoes are sour: a pinch balances the acid.

If it went wrong

If it starts catching, pour it into another pan without scraping; leave the scorched layer behind.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Boil the spaghetti in 3 litres of salted water one minute short of the packet time; keep a ladle of water and drain.

Look for A thin white line in the middle.

Why The last minute is spent in the sauce, where the starch binds it.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back

Too much starch. It will set into a rubbery gel once cool — add more liquid.
Add the spaghetti to the sauce with half the ladle and toss for a minute; off the heat, tear in the basil.

Look for The sauce clinging, with no pool in the pan.

Why Basil aroma is volatile and fades after a minute of heat, so it goes in last.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

A gluten web is forming Gliadin and glutenin hydrated into an elastic net. This is what will hold the gas. no way back

Too much starch. It will set into a rubbery gel once cool — add more liquid.

If you want a crust, do not stay under 140 °C. Food cooks at this heat but never colours.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 120 °C · 26 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

3

Ingredients

300 g Spaghetti
30 g Salt into the boiling water at 10 g a litre; the sauce takes its salt from this water too
800 g Ripe tomatoes
4 tbsp Olive oil
3 cloves Garlic
10 g Fresh basil
3 g Sugar, if needed

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete Someone living with diabetes

The 1 rules we hold for this group did not fire for this dish. That does not mean the dish is suitable for them; it means those particular rules did not apply.

Not about the dish — about the person

Salt in a day

5 g

Ages 2 to 15 Context established

No separate figure is given for a child: the adult value is adjusted downward by the child’s energy requirement. So for a small child the limit is well below 5 g and moves with age — printing one number would invent a precision the source does not offer. Under one year, and 6-24 months, fall outside this recommendation altogether; added salt is not on the table at that age in any case.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

Free sugars

10%

Strong recommendation — adults and children Context established

The same share for adults and for children. Ten per cent of a 2000-calorie day is roughly 50 g of sugar, and a single can of a fizzy drink is more than half of it. The risk of weight gain, obesity and tooth decay rises above this line.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

5%

Conditional recommendation Context established

This one carries a different strength, and the difference is written down on purpose: 10% is a strong recommendation, 5% is conditional. That is WHO’s own distinction, and putting the two in one sentence would say the evidence behind them is equally strong.

World Health Organization, Information note about intake of sugars recommended in the WHO guideline for adults and children, 2015

Protein in a day

0.83–1.31 g/kg

Infants, children and adolescents Context established

Per kilogram the need is higher in a child than an adult, because growth wants protein too. There is no single number: it runs between 0.83 and 1.31 g by age. Which age takes which figure is not written here, because writing it without reading the table would be inventing it.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

The infant feeding calendar

5 years

Shapes that are a choking risk Context established

Whole nuts are not given below five years old — the reason is choking, not allergy. The same logic covers anything round and firm: quarter a grape lengthways, cut sausage along its length rather than across. The nut itself is not the problem; ground or as a butter it is fine from around six months. What changes is the shape, not the ingredient.

NHS, Foods to avoid giving babies and young children

What is done, and what is not: The salt and sugar thresholds are quoted in WHO's own words; not even WHO gives a gram figure specific to a child, only that the adult value is adjusted down by energy requirement. The approach to portions, fussy eating and texture is on the page; this child's growth curve, and any allergy they have, cannot be.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable with a substitution Pasta Instead: Pasta → Rice
Vegan Suitable as it is
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
Diabetes-friendly It depends Quickly digested starch. Cooling it builds resistant starch, and fat, protein, fibre or acid alongside it flattens the curve.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

What a swap costs

Pasta → Rice Stops happening: A gluten web is forming -6 kcal · -0.8 g fat · -5.9 g protein

Computed weight for weight. A ratio per pair would be better, and there is no sourced table of them, so the assumption is stated rather than hidden.

Calculated nutrition

592 kcal
15.8 g Protein
87.8 g Carbohydrate
20.3 g Fat
6.6 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

Vitamins and minerals · per serving

Vitamins

Vitamin A 121 µg · 15%
Vitamin D 0 µg · 0%
Vitamin E 4.2 mg · 35%
Vitamin K 46.0 µg · 61%
Vitamin C 38.7 mg · 48%
B1 (thiamin) 0.20 mg · 18%
B2 (riboflavin) 0.12 mg · 8%
B3 (niacin) 3.3 mg · 21%
B5 (pantothenic acid) 0.71 mg · 12%
Vitamin B6 0.42 mg · 30%
Folate 60.4 µg · 30%
Vitamin B12 0 µg · 0%

Minerals

Potassium 886 mg · 44%
Calcium 65.2 mg · 8%
Phosphorus 263 mg · 38%
Magnesium 85.8 mg · 23%
Iron 2.3 mg · 17%
Zinc 2.0 mg · 20%
Copper 0.48 mg · 48%
Manganese 1.4 mg · 68%
Selenium 63.9 µg · 116%
Sodium 3,896 mg · 162%

% of daily need for:

Percentages are shares of the reference values printed on food labels (Turkish Food Codex labelling regulation, Annex 13 (identical to EU Regulation 1169/2011, Annex XIII)), not a personal requirement. For sodium the reference is a ceiling. Computed from raw ingredients; cooking lowers some vitamins. "~": not measured in some of the ingredients.

USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy · ANSES Ciqual 2025 · CoFID 2021 · Swiss FCDB 7.1

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

Nutri-Score

D Per 100 g of the raw mixture, computed with the published Nutri-Score algorithm (2023 update). Confidence: high.

Nutri-Score compares a food with others of its kind; it is not a health claim or personal dietary advice on its own. Cooking drives off water, so the cooked dish may score differently.

How it was calculated

Category: general food · Negative points 13 − positive points 2 = 11

Energy 612.8 kJ → 1
Saturated fat 0.71 g → 0
Sugars 2.66 g → 0
Salt 2.41 g → 12
Protein 3.91 g → 1 (not counted)
Fibre 1.62 g → 0
Fruit, vegetables, legumes %70.5 → 2

Salt = sodium × 2.5. Only ingredients plainly in the fruit-vegetable-legume group are counted towards that share; doubtful ones are left out, which can only make the letter worse. Values from USDA FoodData Central and Ciqual; 25% of the weight is a close rather than exact match.

After the heat goes off

Serving

Straight away, with a swirl of olive oil.

Keeping · 2 days

The sauce four days; with the pasta, two.

Cooling and reheating

In a covered pan with a spoon of water.

Freezes

The sauce, without basil, freezes three months.

What is left

The sauce goes into menemen or şakşuka.

For a child

Suitable from ten months: cut the spaghetti short and boil a baby’s share in unsalted water. The sauce itself has no salt.

Where to go from here

Boiling & poaching The method this recipe rests on
Tomato What it does in heat, water and acid
Pasta What it does in heat, water and acid
Olive oil What it does in heat, water and acid
Pasta with tomato paste Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Pasta with minced meat Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Tomato soup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need
Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need
Seasonal Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: sweet 29.

Sweet 29
Salty 8
Sour 6
Bitter 12
Umami 18
Heat 4
Richness 18
Aroma 25

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity