Three ingredient only pasta sauce hailed the 'best in the world'

All you need to do it put the ingredients in a pan to simmer for 45 minutes. Photo / Getty Images

Making your own tomato sauce from scratch on a weeknight sounds like a rather onerous task when you could just open a jar.

But a pasta sauce which has been hailed as the 'best in the world' according to Delish can be made from just three ingredients - and it doesn't even require any chopping.

Marcella Hazan, author of groundbreaking cookbooks such as Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking advised that the best way to cook a tomato sauce is with three ingredients - onion, butter and tinned tomato, reports Daily Mail.

The Italian writer's book was published more than 20 years ago in 1992, but the recipe is still hailed revered by food writers, and is surprisingly easy to make with no chopping required.

The esteemed writer recommends simply putting a halved peeled onion in a pot with butter and tinned tomato for 45 minutes, and that's it.

After her death at the age of 89 in 2013, her husband Victor opened up about her simple methods of cooking.

In an interview with Epicurious he described the thought process behind her famous sauce, explaining that she always opted for simplicity.

"Marcella was a genius when it came to taste. She had an immediate understanding about how flavor affects a dish," he explained.

"She asked herself, 'Why chop an onion? Why saute? I'm going to put the onion, tomato, and butter together and forget about it.'"

When it comes to cooking the pasta to go along with your sauce, The American Chemical Society previously revealed the tricks you need.

The advice for the perfect pot of pasta includes adding salt, forgoing the olive oil, keeping the water at a rolling boil and pouring some of the pasta water to the sauce.

Gordon Ramsay is a firm believer that oil keeps the pasta from sticking together.

But food scientists say it does not make a difference which side you take – when you pour out the cooked pasta into a strainer the water washes the oil away.

Marcella was born in Italy but spend most of her life in New York, before retiring in Florida.

When she moved to New York she taught herself to cook using cookbooks from Italy, but soon learned she could recreate the flavour she'd tasted at home with her own recipes.

She went from novice to teacher and began teaching cooking lessons in her apartment, before opening her own cooking school The School of Classic Italian Cooking in 1969.

She published his first book The Classic Italian Cook Book in 1973, which was followed by five other books.

Her recipes would often come with advice on how Italians would eat the food, as well as including her own memories of eating it.