I made marinara sauce out of canned diced hunt’s tomatoes yesterday. You shouldn’t be adding water. The purpose of the sauté is to evaporate off all the liquid and brown the tomatoes. This is best done in a stainless steel skillet in order to have a lot of surface area to speed up the process and your want the stainless to help create that fond.

A way to speed up the process is by first straining the tomatoes of their liquid and then throwing those tomatoes in the skillet. I sauté some garlic, onions, and herbs first before adding the tomatoes.

The tomatoes brown and the bottom of the skillet develops a bunch of fond and then deglaze with wine and then deglaze again with that tomato juice that you strained out. You let that simmer until it thickens.

By this point, the tomatoes are going to be broken down and you’re going to have a chunky marinara. I leave it like this but you can hit it with an immersion blender. You can also add some fresh tomatoes to give an extra layer of flavor and then blend if you want.