'World's best pasta sauce' recipe by legendary Italian chef has just 3 ingredients

This budget-friendly pasta sauce has been dubbed the "best in the world", and requires just three ingredients that you may already have in your kitchen.

While there's certainly nothing more comforting than a big bowl of pasta with a delicious sauce, the fast-paced nature of today's world means that many people are opting for sauces out of a jar.

However, you don't need to, and according to the late Italian-American food writer Marcella Hazan, one of the best pasta sauces can be made easily and cheaply, with just three ingredients.

The pasta sauce recipe, which was first published in Marcella's book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, has since been labelled "the best in the world" by food publication Delish.

The simple recipe requires just tinned tomatoes, an onion and a generous knob butter.

Alternatively, you can prepare fresh tomatoes yourself, although anyone who has tried this will tell you it can be rather time consuming so stick with Marcella's method if you want a speedy meal.

The 1992 recipe is still revered by food writers and cooks alike. No chopping is required. And pasta and tomato sauce is always a hit round the family dining table.

Marcella's precise instructions are to put half a peeled onion into a pot with butter and tinned tomatoes and to leave it all to simmer for 45 minutes.

Sharing the recipe in her book, Marcella wrote: "No other preparation is more successful in delivering the prodigious satisfactions of Italian cooking than a competently executed sauce with tomatoes."

Speaking to Epicurious back in 2016, three years after his wife's death, Marcella's husband Victor opened up about his late wife's simply cooking techniques.

He said: "Marcella was a genius when it came to taste. She had an immediate understanding about how flavour affects a dish.

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