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Tomato, Olive & Chilli Stir-Through Sauce (Leggo’s Copycat)
This tomato, olive and chilli stir-through sauce is my homemade answer to a discontinued supermarket staple that I refuse to let go of. Fresh tomatoes, black olives, chilli paste, roasted garlic paste, tomato paste, and a good glug of olive oil. Ready in minutes, deeply flavourful, and significantly better than the jar ever was.
Tomato, Olive & Chilli Stir-Through Sauce (Leggo's Copycat)
This tomato, olive and chilli stir-through pasta sauce is my homemade take on the Leggo's classic and honestly it gives the jar a serious run for its money. Tangy tomatoes, briny olives and a gentle chilli heat come together in a sauce that coats every strand of pasta beautifully and comes together in minutes. Bold, punchy flavour with barely any effort required. Save this recipe for the nights when you need dinner on the table fast but still want something that tastes like you actually tried!
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tsp garlic paste (roasted garlic paste if you can get it)
- 1/2 tsp minced chilli
- 1/2 tbsp tomato paste
- 400g tin crushed tomatoes (no citric acid)
- 1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives, chopped
- 1/4 tsp sugar
- Salt, to taste
- 1 tsp red wine vinegar
Instructions
- Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and chilli and cook gently for 1-2 minutes, or until fragrant. Don't let the garlic brown.
- Stir in the tomato paste and cook for another minute.
- Add the crushed tomatoes, chopped olives, sugar, and a good pinch of salt.
- Simmer gently, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes, stirring now and then, until thickened and glossy.
- Right at the end, taste and adjust the seasoning, and a splash of vinegar to brighten the sauce. You can also stir through a touch more olive oil at the end for richness.
Notes
- This is a dead ringer for Leggo's tomato, olive, and chilli stir-through sauce. It's got that same rich, glossy texture and punchy flavour, but without any of the preservatives or additives.
- Look for crushed tomatoes without citric acid if you can. Citric acid can make the sauce taste a bit sharp. Brands like Mutti or San Remo are usually good options.
- Roasted garlic paste gives a sweeter, more mellow flavour than fresh garlic. If you're using fresh garlic, mince it finely and use 2 cloves instead of the paste.
- Don't skip cooking the tomato paste for a minute before adding the tomatoes. It deepens the flavour and gets rid of any tinny taste.
- Kalamata olives are key here. They've got that rich, briny flavour that makes this sauce sing. Chop them roughly so you get little bursts of olive throughout.
- The sauce should be thick enough to cling to pasta without being sludgy. If it's too thick, add a splash of water. If it's too thin, simmer for a few more minutes.
- The red wine vinegar is optional but recommended. It brightens everything up and balances the richness.
- This sauce keeps in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 5 days. Reheat gently on the stovetop or in the microwave.
- You can freeze this sauce in portions for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge overnight and reheat gently, adding a splash of water if it's too thick.
- For a creamier version, stir through a tablespoon of cream or mascarpone at the end.
Nutrition Information:
Yield:
4Serving Size:
1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 152Total Fat: 13gSaturated Fat: 2gUnsaturated Fat: 11gSodium: 401mgCarbohydrates: 9gFiber: 3gSugar: 5gProtein: 2g
Please note, this nutrition information is to be used as a guide only. Nutrition information isn’t always accurate.
Serve this with
- Stir through pasta and serve with my Simple Rocket and Parmesan Salad on the side. The peppery rocket and salty Parmesan balance the rich tomato, olive and chilli flavours without making dinner feel heavy.
- Spoon over pan-fried Chicken Romano or white fish, then add roasted potatoes or steamed greens. The punchy sauce does most of the work, so you’ve got an easy dinner without needing loads of extra seasoning.
- Use it with gnocchi and a generous grating of Grana Padano, then serve with garlic bread or a crisp green salad. The soft gnocchi works especially well with the chunky olives and gentle chilli heat.
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The Discontinuation That Started It All
You know what really grinds my gears? When your go-to lazy girl pasta sauce just vanishes off the shelves like it was never even real. My beloved Leggo’s tomato, chilli and olive stir-through, the one that has seen me through deadlines, breakups, and far too many wine-fuelled Tuesday nights, gone. Discontinued. Into the void. And yes, I did consider emailing Leggo’s about it, because how dare they. I didn’t. But I thought about it at length and with genuine feeling.
This is, unfortunately, a pattern in my life. If I love something passionately enough to call it a comfort food, it ends up discontinued. There was a gluten free mac and cheese from the freezer section by Annie’s. Gone. A laksa kit I was absolutely obsessed with. Gone. And now this pasta sauce, which I’d been eating for years and had come to rely on as one of those rare things I could eat without thinking twice about, given the celiac situation and the allergies. When you actually find something you can eat and love, losing it hits differently. I have genuinely had a breakdown in a supermarket aisle over a discontinued product before, which you can read about on my personal blog, and I stand by every emotion involved.
The answer, clearly, was to make my own. Better than the jar. Done properly, from scratch, exactly the way I wanted it.
A Lazy Easter Monday and a Strange Weekend
Easter Monday last week was a public holiday and a quiet one, and after a full long weekend of cooking I wanted something that required almost no effort and delivered maximum comfort. A big bowl of pasta with this sauce was the only possible answer, and it did not disappoint. Not every recipe I cooked over that long weekend made it onto the blog, partly because some of the photos simply didn’t work out and partly because by Monday all I wanted was pasta, and I wasn’t stopping to style anything.
The weather in Brisbane right now is doing something genuinely confusing. Beautifully warm and sunny during the day, blue skies and everything glorious, and then the temperature drops into the teens overnight. Lulu is absolutely loving it. He’s turning into a little fluffy blanket goblin, which is the best possible version of him, and he very much enjoyed having me home for the full four days of the long weekend. He is a creature who believes in quality time and he is not subtle about it.
The weekend also threw up something I didn’t expect. Someone I hadn’t spoken to in about seventeen years found me on a dating app and sent a message. We went on one date twenty years ago, back in our twenties, moved in the same scene for a while, were friendly without ever being proper friends, and then life did what life does. Reconnecting was genuinely lovely, catching up on seventeen years in that strange compressed way that only happens when two people have enough shared context to skip the small talk. We won’t be dating, for the record. But Brisbane is a small place, and it was a nice unexpected reunion on an already unusual weekend.
Why Losing Things You Love (From Supermarket Shelves) Hits Differently as a Celiac
There’s a specific kind of grief that comes with being celiac and having allergies, and it’s the grief of discovering something safe and delicious and then watching it disappear. Most people can just pivot. Try another brand, grab whatever’s on the shelf. I can’t do that. Finding something I can actually eat that I also genuinely love is a small miracle, and the supermarket taking it away without warning feels like a personal affront every single time.
The laksa kit disappearing was genuinely one of the more upsetting product discontinuations of my adult life, and I say that without irony. It was one of those rare things that was gluten free, soy free, delicious, and convenient all at once, which is a combination that barely exists in the world of packaged food. And then it was gone. And this pasta sauce, which had been my lazy weeknight staple for years, the same. I keep a mental list of everything I love that’s been taken from me by supermarket ranging decisions, and it is long.
The upside, if there is one, is that it keeps pushing me back into the kitchen to make things myself. This sauce is better than the jar ever was. The laksa recipe I eventually developed is better than the kit. The mac and cheese I make now is better than anything Annie’s was putting in the freezer section. Being forced to recreate things from scratch is its own frustrating kind of gift, and I’ll take it, even if I’d still rather have the originals back on the shelf where they belong.
Ingredient breakdown
Olive oil
The base of the whole sauce and the fat that everything else cooks in. The garlic and chilli go into the olive oil over medium-low heat rather than high heat, which is deliberate. You want them to bloom gently and release their flavour into the oil without browning or catching, because burnt garlic will make the entire sauce bitter and there’s no coming back from it. A good quality olive oil is worth using here because it’s a primary flavour in a very simple sauce.
Garlic paste
Roasted garlic paste gives a sweeter, more mellow flavour than fresh garlic and works really well in a sauce like this where you want depth without sharpness. Fresh minced garlic is a perfectly fine substitute if that’s what you have. Either way, keep the heat gentle and watch it closely because garlic paste in particular can catch quickly if the pan is too hot.
Minced chilli
Just enough chilli to give the sauce a background warmth rather than an aggressive heat. It goes in with the garlic at the start so it has time to mellow slightly in the oil before the tomatoes go in. Adjust the amount based on your tolerance and the heat level of whatever chilli you’re using, because they vary considerably.
Crushed tomatoes
The bulk of the sauce, and the quality of the tin matters here more than in a long-braised dish where other flavours have time to develop. Look for crushed tomatoes without citric acid, which can make the finished sauce taste sharp and slightly chemical. Brands like Mutti tend to be reliably good. The tomatoes simmer uncovered for fifteen to twenty minutes, which reduces them down into that thick, glossy texture that makes a stir-through sauce cling to pasta properly rather than pooling at the bottom of the bowl.
Tomato paste
A small amount cooked off for a minute before the crushed tomatoes go in, which deepens the tomato flavour and adds a richness and body to the sauce that you wouldn’t get from crushed tomatoes alone. Same principle as every other recipe in this collection that uses tomato paste. Cook it until it darkens slightly and smells caramelised rather than raw.
Kalamata olives
Roughly chopped so you get little bursts of olive distributed throughout the sauce rather than one large piece that overwhelms a mouthful. Kalamata olives have a rich, briny, slightly fruity flavour that is quite different from generic black olives and is a big part of what makes this sauce taste like the Leggo’s version it’s based on. Don’t substitute with a milder olive because you’ll lose the character that defines the whole thing.
Sugar
This one is specific to replicating the Leggo’s original. If you’re using good quality crushed tomatoes without citric acid or other additives, you probably won’t need it at all because the tomatoes will be naturally balanced. But the jarred sauce has a particular flavour profile that a tiny pinch of sugar helps recreate, and since that’s the whole point of this recipe, in it goes. It’s not there to make the sauce sweet, you won’t taste it as sugar, it’s just doing the quiet work of rounding everything out and getting it closer to the original.
Red wine vinegar
Optional but genuinely recommended. A small splash added right at the end brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the olive oil and olives without making anything taste distinctly vinegary. It’s the same quiet acid work that lemon juice does in other recipes in this collection. Taste the sauce before adding it and make the call based on whether the sauce tastes rounded and complete or slightly flat and heavy.
Salt
Added with the tomatoes and adjusted at the end. The olives bring their own saltiness so taste carefully before adding more at the final stage.
