Stanley Tucci's simple sauce recipe is the best way to use up 'tough' tomatoes for a hearty autumn meal

Stanley Tucci knows it “sounds gross,” but we’ve all got a few tomatoes lying around that are “starting to get a little old.” But rather than throwing them away when their skins get tough, he's taken to Instagram to show us how he uses them to create a hearty autumnal sauce.

The “really simple” recipe can be paired with all kinds of different meals, he says, with him captioning the video, “A really simple tomato sauce. Delicious, easy, versatile. Make a batch, keep it in the fridge and add pretty much anything to it to make a great meal.”

Talking us through his recipe with the trusty Stanley Pan Jr from his collaboration with GreenPan on the hob in front of him, and in his pinstripe apron, Stanley revealed the secret behind the ease of the recipe is his way of preparing the tomatoes.

“What I did was I cut them and then what you do is you can squeeze them in water like this and all the seeds come out,” he revealed. And, if the skin of your tomatoes is too tough, using a food processor to give them a “whizz” will help them to cook down.

He lets the tomatoes soak while sweating down his onion and garlic for the sauce. And, when those have cooked down in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil alongside his garlic, “I’m going to take all those nice tomatoes and stick them right in there,” Stanley says.

“Then I’m going to cook those down just a bit by themselves,” he said, adding that now is the time to salt the tomatoes “generously.” Then, he adds two cans of tomatoes and now is the time for seasoning with basil and a little more salt.

Shop Stanley Tucci's Kitchen

With the sauce cooking down, he uses a wooden spoon to “smash up” the tomatoes and all that’s left to do is cook it down with the lid on or off. And, Stanley says, “That’s it and it’s going to be really good.

“You can do whatever you want with this sauce,” Stanley says. “You can add shrimps to it, you can add peas to it, you can saute a little guanciale and add that to it and a little peperoncino. You can do a million things with it. I make a batch and then I put it in the fridge and I use it for different things.”