If you walk into the kitchen of any serious food person, you’ll see it. The spine is probably cracked. There are definitely tomato water stains on page 152. Maybe some dried flour stuck in the binding. It’s a thick, unassuming book with a green and white cover that looks like it belongs in 1992. Because it does. Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan isn't just a cookbook; it is the definitive manual on how to stop overcomplicating your dinner.
Marcella didn't care about your "fusion" ideas. She didn't care about food trends. Honestly, she was famously prickly about how people handled ingredients. She was the woman who looked at the American obsession with garlic and basically told everyone they were doing it wrong. She changed the way an entire generation of cooks thought about a simple onion.
Most people think they know Italian food because they’ve had a heavy lasagna or a bowl of spaghetti. But Marcella? She taught us about insaporire. That’s the stage where you let the vegetables cook in the fat until they’ve actually absorbed the flavor. You can't rush it. If you try to speed it up, you've already lost.
The Tomato Sauce Everyone Obsesses Over
Let’s talk about the butter. You know the one.
The most famous recipe in Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan is the tomato sauce with onion and butter. It sounds like a joke. How can a sauce with only three ingredients (four if you count the salt) be better than the complex, long-simmered ragùs we see on TV? It’s because the butter rounds out the acidity of the canned San Marzano tomatoes in a way that olive oil just can't.
You take a 28-ounce can of tomatoes. You put in five tablespoons of butter. You peel an onion, cut it in half, and drop it in. That's it. No chopping. No sautéing garlic until it burns and tastes bitter. You simmer it for 45 minutes, discard the onion, and you're done. It’s velvety. It’s rich. It makes you realize that most of us have been trying way too hard for way too little reward.
Why Garlic Isn't the Hero You Think It Is
Marcella had a very specific relationship with garlic. In the United States, we tend to think "more is better." We use garlic presses that turn the cloves into a pungent, acrid paste. Hazan hated that. She believed garlic should be a background note, not the lead singer.
In her book, she often instructs you to smash the clove, brown it in oil until it’s fragrant, and then—this is the part that kills people—take it out and throw it away. You get the perfume of the garlic without the "garlic breath" that lingers for three days. It’s a subtle shift, but it’s the difference between a dish that tastes like a restaurant and one that tastes like a home in Emilia-Romagna.
📖 Related: Aussie Oi Oi Oi: How One Chant Became Australia's Unofficial National Anthem
The Architecture of a Meal
Structure matters. In Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan, she explains that an Italian meal isn't a giant pile of food on one plate. It’s a progression.
- The Primo: Usually the pasta or risotto. This is the starch. It isn't a side dish. Don't you dare serve it next to your chicken.
- The Secondo: The meat or fish.
- The Contorno: The vegetable side.
This separation allows you to actually taste the components. When you mix everything together, the flavors get muddy. Marcella was a scientist before she was a cook—literally, she had doctorates in biology and geology—and she approached the structure of a meal with that same analytical precision. She understood how flavors interact on a chemical level.
The Pasta Water Myth and Reality
You’ve heard people say pasta water is "liquid gold." Marcella was saying that decades ago. But she also insisted on the right salt. She wanted sea salt. And she wanted a lot of it. The water should taste like the sea. If you don't salt the water properly, the pasta will be bland all the way to its core, and no amount of sauce on top can fix a bland noodle.
It’s about the "marriage." That’s what she called the moment the pasta meets the sauce. You don't just dump sauce on top of a pile of dry noodles. You finish the pasta in the pan with the sauce and a splash of that starchy water. It creates an emulsion. It makes the sauce cling to the grain of the wheat.
Beyond the Red Sauce: The Real Essentials
While the tomato sauce gets all the glory, the real meat of the book—pun intended—is in the vegetable and meat sections. Have you ever made her Roast Chicken with Two Lemons?
It is arguably the easiest roast chicken in the world. You don't rub butter under the skin. You don't make a complex herb rub. You take two lemons, roll them on the counter to soften them, prick them with a toothpick, and put them inside the chicken. Then you roast it. The lemons expand and steam the chicken from the inside out with citrus perfume while the skin gets crispy.
It’s brilliant because it’s simple.
👉 See also: Ariana Grande Blue Cloud Perfume: What Most People Get Wrong
Marcella’s philosophy was built on the idea that if you buy good ingredients, you should stay out of their way. If you have a perfect bunch of asparagus, don't bury it in cream and cheese. Blanch it. Dress it with good olive oil and maybe a squeeze of lemon. Done.
The Controversial Bits
She wasn't always "easy." Some of her instructions are demanding. She insisted that you peel your peppers. She wanted you to de-string your celery. To her, these weren't optional steps for the "fancy" version of the dish; they were the requirements for the correct version of the dish.
She also had strong opinions on Parmigiano-Reggiano. If it wasn't the real stuff from Italy, she didn't want it in the house. The pre-shaken green cans? Absolute sacrilege. She argued that the saltiness and crystalline texture of real Parmesan were essential seasoning elements, not just a garnish.
Why We Still Need This Book in 2026
We live in an age of 15-second recipe videos where everything is "explosive" or "extreme." Essentials of Italian Cooking by Marcella Hazan is the antidote to that noise. It’s a quiet book. It doesn't have flashy photos—it has hand-drawn illustrations that actually show you how to cut a squid or shape a tortellino.
The book is a combination of two earlier works: The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking. When they were combined in the early 90s, it became the "bible." It’s the book that taught Americans that "Northern" and "Southern" Italian food are as different as French and Spanish food.
- The North: Think butter, cream, polenta, and fresh egg pasta.
- The South: Think olive oil, dry pasta, chili flakes, and seafood.
Marcella was from Cesenatico, on the Adriatic coast, but she lived in Venice for a long time. She brought that Northern sensibility—the love of slow-cooked meats and delicate vegetables—to a public that mostly thought Italian food was just meatballs and heavy red gravy.
Practical Steps to Mastering Marcella's Kitchen
If you’re going to dive into this book, don't try to cook the whole thing at once. It’s too much. Instead, start with the fundamentals that will change your everyday cooking.
✨ Don't miss: Apartment Decorations for Men: Why Your Place Still Looks Like a Dorm
First, fix your sofritto. Most people cook their onions, carrots, and celery for three minutes. Marcella wants you to cook them until they are soft, sweet, and translucent. This is the "soul" of your soup or sauce. If the onions aren't right, nothing else will be.
Second, buy a food mill. She wasn't a fan of the food processor for sauces. A food processor shears the seeds and adds a bitter note to tomatoes. A food mill removes the skins and seeds while aerating the sauce. It’s a physical task, but the texture difference is night and day.
Third, respect the vegetable. Read her section on artichokes. Or her recipes for braised fennel. She treats vegetables with the same respect most chefs reserve for a prime rib.
Fourth, stop using "cooking wine." If you wouldn't drink a glass of it, don't put it in your risotto. The alcohol cooks off, but the flavor of the wine concentrates. Cheap, salty cooking wine will ruin a dish faster than almost anything else.
The Actionable Legacy
Start with the Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter. It’s the lowest barrier to entry. Once you see how three ingredients can create something that tastes like a five-star meal, you’ll trust her.
Move on to the Bolognese. It takes hours. It requires milk—yes, milk in a meat sauce—to protect the meat from the acidity of the wine and tomatoes. It is a lesson in patience. You’ll learn that "done" isn't when the timer goes off, but when the fat separates from the sauce and the liquid has evaporated.
Then, try the Braised Celery with Onion, Pancetta, and Tomatoes. It sounds boring. It’s celery, for heaven’s sake. But it turns a crunchy, watery snack into a silky, savory revelation.
Marcella Hazan didn't just give us recipes. She gave us a new set of eyes. She taught us that cooking isn't about ego or flair; it’s about the quiet, disciplined pursuit of flavor. Grab a copy of Essentials of Italian Cooking, buy a bag of salt, and start with the onions. Your kitchen will never be the same.