Making homemade pasta sauce is a labor of love, and if your sauce comes out sour, bitter, or bland, it can be tempting to skip the work next time and use a jar of store-bought sauce. The next time you make tomato sauce, try adding this simple ingredient to help you achieve a great balance of flavor.

Pasta sauce is typically made with oil, garlic, onion, tomatoes, salt, and pepper, which are cooked at low heat for a long time to allow the flavors to meld. To get an even richer sauce without a lot of extra work, add a small pinch of some sugar or something else sweet, like honey, to help bring balance to the flavors.

If you think sugar has no place in tomato sauce, know that this practice comes from Italy, where cooks add a little sugar to late-season tomatoes that are not as ripe and sweet as their mid-summer counterparts. If you’re using fully ripe tomatoes, you likely won't need sugar at all, but give your sauce a taste to see if it needs a pinch.